The Runway

As you can see from the satellite picture of the Common on the index page, the runway - or what remains of it - pretty well dominates the Common. Indeed, it would be a pretty odd airfield that wasn't dominated by its runway(s). The old runway was massive, over two miles in length, and very wide, and thus able to accommodate the most massive of cargo planes and bombers. There were extensive and large parking aprons dotted about.

When they decided, after the Cold War, to demolish the airbase, one of the objects they left behind undemolished was the central crossover of the runway, and that's what I'm going to try to show you here. I say try, because it's not that easy to photograph a large flat piece of the earth from just 6 feet above it, but I've tried.

I've included here a mention of the old PAPI light installations at points E on the overhead and a mysterious fenced-off area at the far left end of the runway. SOme would have it that this was where a nuclear device fell to earth when a huge aewroplane crashed. Hmmm.

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