The Chairman's Run - Sunday 28th September 2008

There seems to be a theme developing for the annual Chairman’s Run of the Abingdon Works Centre.

2005 was a visit to the Hook Norton Brewery, still powered by steam engine.
2006 a visit to the Oxford Bus Museum, it also houses the Morris museum.
2007 this time a visit to the Buckinghamshire Railway Museum at Quainton.
2008 saw us visiting The Museum of Berkshire Aviation at Woodley.

Each time there is a road run from the Abingdon-on-Thames area, this year we used the popular starting point of the Abingdon Market Place.

On what had started as a very misty morning, 30+ M.G.s spanning 70 years of MG production, set off late morning - more were meeting us at the Museum - for a 33 mile run to Woodley just east of Reading, a day which ended in brilliant sunshine.

The route initially followed what was the old A34 through Drayton and Steventon before turning off onto a road that hugs the northern side of the Berkshire Downs, skirting the village of Harwell, through Upton and Blewbury before joining the A329 at Streatley.

Streatley is the crossing point of the River Thames at the Goring Gap, where the river narrows and so do the hills on each side. So over the river to Goring on the Chiltern Hills side of the Gap, up the hill to Crays Pond and through to Cane End and on to Peppard via the village known as Gallowstree Common. Onward via country lanes to Binfield Heath, Dunsden, crossing the River Thames again at Sonning, onto Woodley to the site of the old Reading Aerodrome.

Berkshire's dynamic contribution to aviation history is graphically re-captured at the museum. Run as a charitable trust, the museum is at the historic site of Woodley Airfield, near Reading - once the centre of a thriving aircraft industry. Miles and Handley Page aircraft built at Woodley and of course Fairey Aviation at nearby White Waltham, aircraft are being re-constructed and exhibited along with fascinating pictorial records and priceless archives.

The Museum of Berkshire Aviation, in Mohawk Way, Woodley, is crammed full of memorabilia and aircraft hardware from the heyday of aviation.

It focuses on Miles Aircraft, which was based in Woodley Airfield – then called Reading Aerodrome – from 1932 until the late 1940s and ML Aviation (MLA), based in White Waltham from the late 1930s until recent years.

Many of the projects worked on by MLA were for the Ministry of Defence and classified top secret. These included black boxes, ejector seats, pressurised helmets, a flying jeep and a remote-controlled flying surveillance unit, called the Sprite – Surveillance, Patrol, Reconnaissance, Intelligence, Target designator, Electronic warfare.

It was at Woodley that Douglas Bader, later to become a legend as a Battle of Britain fighter pilot, lost his legs in a flying accident in 1931. It was the staff at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading that saved his life. He later went on to be a keen golfer and flew his own Miles Aircraft.

At the end of a very successful day out everyone agreed that we could not have wished for better weather.  What a shame other events the Centre have organized in 2008 could not have been similarly blessed!  Praise must be handed out to the volunteers at the museum who gave us all a warm welcome.   Our visit has spurred them on to hopefully extend similar welcomes to other groups. We were one of the largest they had ever had and were equally pleased with the way the visit went.

Where might 2009 take us?

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Text: Phil Grinham
Photos: Phil Grinham and Bob Foster