A trip to East Lothian at the weekend led the Sketcher Clan to the National Museum of Flight in East Fortune.
I love being at the museum of flight, it has been a while but when ever I drive into the airfield and see the war time out buildings and glimpses of the vintage aircraft on the site I am transported back in time.
The Sketcher twins love it too, seeing the scale of the planes and the fragility of the older ones. Its a wonder that early pilots put so much faith in what look like flimsy structures.
And just now there is an added attraction for our two, the Brick Wonders lego exhibition which surrounds the Concorde. We are a family of lego builders and so had to visit and ‘travel around the old and new Wonders of the World‘, which have been beautifully and imaginatively recreated using half a million Lego bricks by brick artist Warren Elsmore and his team.
The sketcher twins were taking photos while I sketched, they were keen to note how the many shapes of bricks had been used to create these structures, keen to copy and take inspiration for their own builds back at home.
Although we had visited Concorde before, it is always great to see inside, see all those (seemingly thousands) of buttons in the cockpit. Beneath the beautiful Concorde is a Lego version of the iconic plane which is very impressive and uses 60,000 bricks!!
One bonus of the current spacing restrictions, we had the aircraft to ourselves, and the museum is a great option for the current spacing restrictions due to the pandemic. Staff were everywhere ensuring we followed the directions when in doors and there were plenty of sanitiser stations.
My final sketch is this cute brute, a Matador 4×4 truck which could carry 10 tonnes and dates back to 1939. I love the character of these vehicles and love the fact they are hiding in their wee houses.
There is so much to see, and remember to listen and watch the first hand accounts from pilots during the war. It was very moving and a made a lasting impression on our two children. In the end I ran out of time, I will have to return to sketch the planes another day!
I remember Concord flying into Edinburgh on it’s final flight here around ten years ago and it was great to see her again and be able to take the kids on board, they loved seeing the cockpit and all those buttons – I can’t imagine trying to remember what they all do! Sitting in her own hangar surrounded by memorabilia, news cuttings and history films Concord was the star of the show.