Lancaster flypast, Derwent Dam

The BBMF Lancaster is due to fly over Derwent Dam at 12:05hrs on Wednesday. Given that it’s going to be difficult to get anywhere near the place in the car it would seem like a good opportunity to get out on the mountain bike. Where is best to view the flypast? From the ground or up high, if so where? Anyone watched it over the dam before?

Trevor.

Cant answer your question. But would love to go and see that.

Always had a fascination of the Lancaster.

Having had the opportunity to do this from the other perspective (although not quite in a Lancaster):

I’d say somewhere along the road next to the upper reservoir, so you can catch the plane as it dips into the valley up top and then crosses the dam and away down to Ladybower.

I’m riding over too and have been wondering where would be best to watch from, did think about the track that overlooks Ladybower on the way up to Whinstone Lee Tor

Last time I watched it, it was from about HERE

Rode around the res then pushed / carried up a footpath from mid-way along the eastern bank. Anywhere along that hill or down by Derwent Edge / Whinstone Lee Tor is fine. It comes over the dam then down Ladybower and does a turn over the A57 / A6013 junction then comes back.

I’ll be riding out there tomorrow, aim to get there for 11ish and then just find a spot on the hillside. Traffic will be mental, it always is.

where will you be riding from? Trying to get the day off for it as well, and also plan go bike in from somewhere hopefully away from the traffic chaos

I’m probably going park at Castleton on the way up to the broken road and ride from there

Last time I cycled over Lockerbrook (parked at Hope and did Brinks, Potato Alley, etc.) and then where it pops out onto the road, crossed over and dropped down to a clearing by the reservoir.

where will you be riding from?

My house!;-)

I have parked at Snake Pass before (after clearing it with the landlord and promising to buy food on my return!) and taken the MTB in over Lockerbrook before but it’s just as easy to come in on the CX bike up to Rushup, down to Hope and up via Aston / Thornhill.

A few years ago, riding out to watch it with a mate, I came off on Roych Clough and broke my collarbone. Walked out of Roych up to Rushup, rode down Mam Nick, out to the res, climbed up to the hill above the dam. There’s some rather shaky video footage as I tried to hold the camera steady with my working left arm. At that point my mate is like “right, I need to pick the kids up from school” so he rode off. I rode into Edale, had some food and got the train home, cleaned myself up a bit and got the bus to hospital.
The staff at hospital asked the usual stuff – when did you do this (about 8hrs ago), what painkillers have you had (none, I was hoping for morphine), what have you been doing (oh just riding 25 miles, mostly off-road). They were kind of half impressed and half very unahppy with me!

You can see the view I had of it HERE (this is a couple of years after the story above, when the Canadian plane was over as well)

When the Canadian Lancaster was over the other year, a few of us rode over Cutgate, watched the flight from the beach at the north east side of Derwent dam.

5 years back, the dear wife and I went down in the car, parked up towards Fairholmes, watched from up the hill on the east side. Great spot to view from.

Edit, it took over an hour to queue down to the A57. 😕

If you don’t mind a little hike, you can avoid the worst of the traffic by parking on Mortimer Road, coming up from Langsett. Then walk over the moor on a good footpath brings you out above the dam in a great viewing spot. Was it really five years ago? Anyway it was a great atmosphere and well worth the trip.

Excellent heads up – cheers! – I didn’t know that was happening.

That’s tomorrow’s day out sorted then. Think I’ll drop the lad at school in Macc and then drive over to Hope and ride over to where Crazy legs suggested. It’s called working from home ……

day off confirmed, now i just need to decide if i want to be up on the hillside or down by the water. or even right below the dam.

Thinking some shots with the ultra wide lens as it passes over might be interesting, will see it again Saturday at Shuttleworth as it is.

I’ll just post this up, because… well…. why not?

My illustration of the two Lancs they flew over Derwent Dam a couple of years back

Lancasters over Ladybower by bin lid[/url], on Flickr

if you’re going up Whinstone Lee Tor make sure you follow the PDMTB line!

https://www.raf.mod.uk/display-teams/battle-of-britain-memorial-flight/news/dambusters-75th-anniversary-to-be-marked-with-a-lancaster-tour/

dam will my boss give me the day off

Will be cancelled if wind speed is as forecast

Yep someone posted a press release up on FB from the BBMF saying that it wouldn’t happen if predicted windspeeds occurred

https://mobile.twitter.com/RAFBBMF/status/996417799730946048

Thanks for the heads up re the wind.

My illustration of the two Lancs they flew over Derwent Dam a couple of years back

That Bomb Aimer looks terrified.

50 year fly-past was the place to be.

RAF still had plenty of toys – Tornadoes arseing it down the valley, Red Arrows displaying in the valley and doing the synchro pass over the dam wall and BBMF plus Mossie. Not no flypast neither – this way, that way proper airshow.

That cgi lanc looks sad

The 50 year fly-past/show looked awesome. Never to be repeated I suspect!

Never to be repeated I suspect!

Airshows used to be incredible! But with ever stricter controls on speed, height, distance from crowdline etc and the need to preserve ever older unique aircraft they’re getting very limited.

And stuff like this which is far less of a controlled environment is even more difficult. There’s always the chance that someone is out in the hills, completely unaware that this event is going on and they’re flying a kite or a drone or something.

Still nothing on the BBMF newsfeed. I’ll start riding out there about 9ish and I guess just see what does or doesn’t happen.

Flypast cancelled due to wind speeds according to Derby Telegraph

https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/derby-news/lancaster-bomber-flyover-cancelled-1572264

Facebook page is now reporting that a typhoon will fly as much of the route as possible instead

Bit of a balls up, announced on twitter and by event stewards that typhoon was also cancelled only for one to go through 10 minutes later. Turned round just in time to see it

I considered going up for that, glad I didn’t now, would have been gutted.. just as well it wasn’t windy in WW2 eh? We’d never have won it.

You can kind of understand why they are nervous about flying in windy conditions when there are only two flying Lancs left in the world (and they very nearly lost the BBMF one to a fire a while ago)

Aye, I bet it has pretty severe flying restriction on it these days, it is going on for a 70+ year old airframe!!

I considered going up for that, glad I didn’t now, would have been gutted.. just as well it wasn’t windy in WW2 eh? We’d never have won it.

Crosswinds on the runway at Coningsby were outside limits, even if the wind itself once airborne was OK. As it was it was very blustery – constant wind speed is one thing but gusting winds in a valley like that isn’t the place to be trying to manoeuvre a big 75yr old bomber.

I left the house more or less as the info was coming in about the flight being replaced by a Typhoon so faced with the option of binning it all off, cancelling my days holiday and going to work or, as I was already riding, just pushing on with it, I went for the latter. We rode up to Whinstone Lee Tor, sat in the heather, quite a few people up there and traffic down by the dam was pretty mental. About 12.30, people start getting restless and then a guy took a call – it was his daughter and grandkids down by the dam, a policeman had apparently told them the whole thing was cancelled. So people started drifting away, I was still checking the BBMF Twitter feed and then 2 minutes later, there was a whoosh and the Typhoon flew down the valley. Lot of pissed off people because the Twitter feed had just posted that it was all cancelled due to the weather but the pilot must have found a break in the cloud to get him down into the valley.

Some of the comments on the BBMF social media is pretty awful – OK so the communication wasn’t fantastic but it’s hardly life and death stuff. The irony is that you can go out to the Mach Loop and watch all manner of low-flying jets all day although I guess it’s the overall anniversary stuff around this that makes it different.

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A video shot at the Shuttleworth Collection Flying Proms event in 2014 when the Canadian Lanc was over.  An awe inspiring sight and lots of people in tears!

 OK so the communication wasn’t fantastic

Not fantastic would have been saying nothing at all, tweeting from an official account that the flypast was cancelled when it wasn’t is really poor.

We knew before we set off that the Lancaster wasn’t flying and had the flypast not happened due to the weather that’s life, but the misinformation is just piss poor.

Well about 8.30am this morning, they flew the Lancaster over the dams…

https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/997033421309403137

Weather window opened up and they had one of the original bomb aimers there so he had a seat in it as well. Glad to see they got it done.

I lucked out and saw it on my ride this morning, was just getting my stuff ready and heard a drone then saw it through a pretty small gap in the trees. Then as I was working my way round to Derwent edge it did another pass and got to see it in all its glory! Proper made me smile 😀.

Neighbour just told me that 2 Hercules flew over the dams at very low level yesterday about an hour after everyone had left!

Saw it fly over Monmouthshire about 1hour ago, heading towards Cardiff.

I saw a pair of Hercs over Ladybower a couple of months back, got some good pictures, if I knew how I’d upload them.