My first Air Festival

So last weekend was a very exciting one for me as I finally got to experience my first Bournemouth Air Festival - and what an event it was! 

I'd been looking forward to it for months - mainly because The Red Arrows were flying every single day - and I wasn't disappointed.

I'm no aviation expert (I don't even really like flying that much), but the Festival is such a big event in Bournemouth (an estimated 1.2million visited the town over the 4 days this year) that I felt I had to go. So on Sunday we packed up the children, a picnic, a rug and headed for the beach. Luckily, it was a beautiful sunny day on the Dorset coast - perfect for flying and observing.

I'll be honest and admit that we didn't see many of the stalls because the walkways were fairly congested. And for me, the day was all about the Arrows (I've become a bit obsessed!). My favourite flying squad opened the day with a display that gave me goosebumps and bought a tear to my eye. Twists, turns, hearts, fly pasts - they drew gasps of surprise and delight from the watching crowd. And, of course, the display with peppered with flashes of the famous red, white and blue smoke. There's just something amazing about the Arrows - they are so quintessentially British, so entwined with our country's history, that it doesn't matter how many times you've seen them - they still delight.

But the Arrows weren't the only treat Sunday had in store. We also saw displays by the Vulcan, Spitfire, Lancaster, Miss Demeanour, Chinooks, Black Cats, Typhoon. The sheer beauty of some of the planes - and the history behind them - was just incredible. How some of them managed to get in the air was beyond me – they looked way too heavy to take off. Not to mention the noise some of those bad boys made - wowee!

We inevitably stayed longer than we intended to, but thankfully we managed to avoid any traffic chaos, returning home sunburnt, sandswept, slightly sweaty and shattered. But it was worth it.

And to top it all off, the event is entirely FREE. Yes, that's right. FREE! I'll definitely be back next year – and I hope to see you there!