@@ALMELMUSIC It's Concorde 01 later 101, the third Concorde built and the British pre-production Concorde it was used mainly for testing the variable engine intakes and also had a new design nose section and was larger than the two prototypes. Assembled at Filton, Bristol. So not the Tupolev Tu-144 Concordski
Had the pleasure of watching Jon from my office whilst he recorded the bridge at Huntingdon. Was going to pop out and shake your hand and thank you for the motoring entertainment - then I thought about being in the outtakes as the awkward fan and thought better 😂
Takes me back to the days of TomTom.. I couldn't hit a stretch of A1(M) without it insisting I was in the middle of a lake and telling me to turn right - and that included after I'd updated the map
I cannot keep track of all these little disagreements. Was the cold one where Mr V Iking decided he wanted a holiday cave on some isolated and rainy little island? :)
@@WhiteDieselShed I think the "Cold disagreement" referes to 2 Big Men Boasting about who had the most and biggest fireworks. In fact there is still "A little Fat Man" in N Korea who is still playing with fireworks, but his are sparklers compared to the other two fellas.😂🚀☢
The bset part of watching you skipping off into the distance was knowing you'd have to walk back for the camera. Thanks for not disappointing us at the end.
He wasn't where you think he was. You're close. He was 720m south, and it was neither an old railway or the Varsity line. It is on railway though. Well the one Jon was at is not part of that telescope railway, but you can see it in the background two dishes in the background that are.
Not only was Duxford flown out of during the "second disagreement", it was also used as a filming location for the Battle Of Britain film, having 1 hanger destroyed in the process.
You can't leave it there, you have to tell us about those dishes. There used to be a services on the A604 (?) near Huntingdon called the Megatron. It was spaceship shaped, and the interior was all done up like a spaceship. You ordered on a touch screen system run by Acorn Archimedes computers. This was back in the late 1980s, well before the McDonalds touch screens became a thing. It was a brilliant place. There were speakers providing a droning sounds as you walked down the corridor into the main building.
The lap times would have been a highlight. "The latest Austin made it round in under fifteen minutes with the absolute bare minimum of stops for essential repairs."
And typically the council took a week to do the easier job of getting the car off the roof where it only took a few drunken lads a couple of hours to lift it up there in the first place. Not a lot of change there then?
These road trip videos are most enjoyable. Well presented and interesting with John's usual quirky flair. He goes to the abandoned slip roads so you don't have to. Keep up the good work and thank you.
Aa an American, I just don't think this series could work here. Even on our east coast there is just so much... nothing... in between towns. And for the country that invented the "roadside attraction", we have really let that go to waste.
The UK is geographically small yet has so much interesting history packed into it. Always more interesting to take the road less travelled.@@nitehawk86
My brother went to Brunel and told me of some engineering students that disassembled a students Mini while he was away, and reassembled the Mini inside his room. It's certainly one way of making sure it doesn't get stolen while you are on holiday.
A small tractor suffered a similar fate at my college, it was dismantled, the parts being rowed across a lake in a dinghy to be rebuilt on an island in the middle
Just wait till you get to your 60s when knees, ankles, hips, back all start protesting at long walks....come to that, short walks. Interesting stuff Jon. Hope your drone is fixable.
Until early 2000's, I think, Lolworth services was the first services you came to after leaving London. Swavesey was the last. They both used to be very busy because of that. If Lolworth Services did burn down, it wouldn't be the first time. The slip roads were terrifyingly short & in the think fog one night in 1990 a lorry ploughed through the forecourt, before crashing into the shop, killing a customer & burning the place down.
The remark about Cambridge not being fond of cars brought back a memory from around a decade ago, when I was acquainted with a city councilor and a lot of the remarks were rather anti-car.
Yeah, a lot of punts in Cambridge, oddly enough though, that's where the good ol' ARM processor was invented, cos of Acorn, which came about from a falling out with Clive, who went on to make Sinclair computers, which is now all owned by Sky, cos Amstrad bought out Sinclair, and Sky bought out Amstrad, and, where was I going with this? Oh, yeah, daft punts... :P
Apparently Piers Morgan and Katy Hopkins are filming a programme about the maintenance of these traditional Cambridge water craft: _The care of punts_ .
7:15 fun fact, I’ve spent the last 5 weeks working at a Cambridge water pumping station situated within Sawston Mill grounds. The whole place looks like the set of 28 days later. The water comes from a borehole in the grounds of duxford airfield.
The A 604 started in Harwich and finished in Kettering. On the 1970's our family regularly used this route from Suffolk. It would take what seemed like hours before we reached the A1!
My neck of the woods, having previously lived in Cambridge, Cherry Hinton, Whittlesford and Duxford and now nearby. Spent many a time as a teenager hanging around Sawston and trespassing round the woods in Spicers Paper factory. There used to be a great rope swing there over the river. In the last 25 years, there's been plenty of plane crashes at Duxford, including quite a large plane that didn't stop on the runway and ended up crashing onto the M11 itself. It was also a site for F1 cars to be tested and several years ago, a F1 test driver died in a crash there on the runway.
Hi Jon I love it how you pronounced Godmanchester the way we common people would say it and not like the locals who say Gomster! Gomster for crying out loud!
I have fond memories of Cambridge, In the late 80s's I was stationed at RAF Woodbridge, I visited Cambridge a few times lovely place that was also the only place I ever got a ticket in England, purely my own fault, I over stayed my time parking, also lovely at the time they left a payment envelope with my ticket and the nice gentleman at the post office got me a money order and I was able to pay my fine through the post. Cheers
The "car on the roof" story is one of the best pranks I've heard of, bloody brilliant- would be awesome if any of the guys involved could do an interview with John to tell how it came about, would make a great vid I think. 👍👍👍
Duxford also has a B52 that landed there and can never leave despite only being on loan! That'd have been a good factoid to use and very much on message for this glorious channel.
The A14/A1307 around Huntingdon may be of interest. The Concrete viaduct taking the former A14 over a section of Huntingdon was found to have a few problems not so long ago, and short term strengthening was installed, but long term measures were going to be very expensive, so the building of the new A14 route to the South was somewhat hurried up. The viaduct was then removed, section by section, but not without problems as some sections turned out to be far heavier than anyone paid lots of money to work these things out, actually realised. The 2 ends of the former A14 now A1307, then had to be reconnected to the surrounding road network within Huntingdon by building two new pieces of road.
Great outro, Jon! I loved seeing the University radio telescopes, as well as the Cherry Hinton Chalk Pits! They are all really nice to walk around on a sunny day :D
I’ve only been to Cambridge once (as a tourist it’s very disappointing compared to Oxford) but I stayed on Cherry Hinton caravan park and yes that is quite an interesting area.
Nice video, Jon. Pleased to see you end up at the Mullard Radio Observatory. That was built on the site of a WW2 'Filling Station'. Not the usual kind, though. It was where munitions were filled with Mustard Gas, which thankfully, was never used for a second time. "Buy us a drone" 😆😆😆
Nice to see an improvised Dance Of The Cambridge Punts at the end in lieu of drone action. I know you were knackered but hey, why not style it out? 🤷🏻♂️ This is most definitely my favourite journey thus far, albeit largely because I know most of the features in it and have used that old BP/Burger King place loads of time in the past. Even now we still haven’t got used to not going through Huntingdon en route to Lincoln on the A14. The bridge over the railway is now gone and it has much improved the location, albeit it means we don’t see the old water tower which used to mean we were less than an hour from our destination. What thrilling lives we lead…🙄 Didn’t know about the runway at Duxford being truncated. Seems a bit of an extreme measure to build a new dual carriageway just to stop a plane being able to take off though 🤔 Excellent stuff as ever 👍🍀🍻
A130 used to start at Canvey an go all the way to Cambridge. It was shortened back to Dunmow in 1980, then shortened again in 2008 and now finishes at Chelmsford.
Actually it use to start in Eastwood, but that stretch is now the A129/1015. It went to Canvey after they built the Carpenters Arms to Sadlers into Canvey Way stretch in the 1970s.
I’m a day late but still here. As soon as I saw the drone had died I knew you’d be in for some hard work for the outro. So glad you didn’t just recycle on old shot. Such a good content creator 👌👌👌
I love these road trip episodes, the chalk pits are a nice place to go to chill out or do mountain biking aswell. There's also used to be an abandoned mansion on the road at 7:02 just before entering Great Shelford
Old maps are interesting as many sizable towns now were super small about 80 years ago. It make you wonder how accurate population estimates are these days. Maybe 20 million under, or more! Who knows but the differences really are shocking.
I’ve stayed at the Travelodge and ate at herbies last Christmas. Herbies was fine but I felt sorry for them as the new road bypasses the restaurant. Keep up the good work fella!
I grew up in godmanchester, and now live in Duxford, so this felt like it was made for me! Great stuff, excellent presentation and lots of facts and information with no waffle. I also fly a drone, not sure the radio station allows, but would have been a great shot!
Even at its full 6000m length the runway at Duxford was too short for a normal Concorde landing. In order to make the flight they had to reduce the weight of the aircraft by removing all the test equipment, and they had to use drag parachutes to bring it to rest. Concord 101's final flight was piloted by former Chief Test Pilot, Brian Trubshaw, who had piloted the first flight of a British Concorde in 1969 (the first French built Concorde flew a little earlier). Two days after it landed the motorway contractors started tearing up 1200m of the runway.
The best journey in this area is - turn right at Godmanchester ( coming over the bridge from Huntingdon ) and get onto the St Neots road ( I think this might be the old Great North Road ? The old A1 ? ) Very pleasant if you are not in a hurry and want to see some backwaters !
Like the new format. Always wondered what you’d do when you ran out of motorway. The result is really good - keep up the good work. You’re much too clever for the BBC.
Back towards Godmanchester, you skipped what is certainly a Little Chef on the west bound carriageway. Hemingford Abbots Services. Although HOTTUBSDIRECT also had that for a while. There was also a Shell fuel station. The drone started working again at Girton. Clever editing, or did you turn it off and on again? Then you ended in Barton Road (without drone), dancing past the One-Mile Telescope, towards the (Arthur) Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. Nice to follow your journey. (Edited to speel Arthur correctly!)
FYI I had DJI replace an action camera this year. I didnt even buy it new, had no proof of purchase and it was compeltely bricked. They just asked me to send it off, and then sent a brand new one. So hopefully they can do the same for your drone!
It was always great fun trying to deliver anything to Cambridge centre. Bollards would rise up from the road so that you couldn't get in or back out after certain times. Luckily, there was an intercom at the bollard gates, but what a palaver 🚧🛢️
How to move a Concorde when the runway is not long enough. In 2004, G-BOAA said farewell to Heathrow and took to the water on the first step of a seaborne journey to Scotland. After being moved from Heathrow on a transporter, Concorde was loaded onto a specialist barge, the Terra Marique, at the tiny Thames port of Isleworth. From here she sailed down the Thames and along the east coast of Britain, arriving on Scottish soil a day early the following Saturday, where she was rolled ashore at the British Energy jetty (now EDF) at Torness, East Lothian. Concorde's week-long journey from London ended in an hour-long trundle across muddy fields to East Fortune, guided by members of 39 Engineer Regiment's 53 Field Squadron (Air Support), with a helicopter hovering overhead, to a greeting by two pipers. At the time, Concorde's journey north was thought to have been one of the most complex of any transport venture undertaken.
