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Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

England also has a lot of disused airfields, often with huge hangers and stupendous concrete runways built during WWII. A few are open as museums. They can be worth a quick visit.

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My family used to farm a chunk of land in Lincolnshire, UK. Many of our farms were on or surrounded by active or decommissioned RAF bases.

I learnt to drive on the unused tarmac at one of those old bases, RAF Wickenby. As the parent poster mentioned, many of the bases are worth a visit and Wickenby in particular has a memorial to airmen lost in the world wars.

Dunholme Lodge was defunct RAF base near the then active V-bomber base RAF Scampton. It was a favourite place for us RAF kids to explore - the concrete of the torn up runway provided all sorts of caves, and there was a deserted multi-storey control tower, which was quite frightening when the winds were blowing. This would have been the early 1960s - I think it is all farmland or new-build housing now.

That was on a neighbouring farm to one of ours. It’s just a bit of concrete in the middle of their fields now. You possibly got shouted at by my famously grumpy grandad.

In my experience ALL Lincolnshire farmers are grumpy. But we may have escaped as one of us was the local Police Constable's son.

Didn't see this before. My dad was a happy farmer, but the stereotype holds in general. Weather, markets, governments, voters (bloody Brexit) all attract farmers' ire. And even when it's going well, they're still working harder than 63.5% of the populace.

Seems the stereotype might have skipped a generation :)

Well, I don't think farmers had to worry so much about those things back when I was a chid - they seemed to just like shouting. It's not like there was much we could wreck - the last use of Dunholme Lodge (as far as I'm aware) was as a Bloodhound SAM battery, notionally protecting Scampton. Anyway, I enjoyed playing at the place (RAF did not unfortunately leave the odd missile around), and as I said I never encountered your grandpa. :-)

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