Flywheel Festival Finds Favour

The Flywheel Festival at Bicester Heritage, in Oxfordshire, was the venue for the Giulietta Register summer event on Sunday 25 June 2017. This was the register’s first participation at this Festival, which has been running for only a few years, and it was most enjoyable experience. It was a good turnout of Register members with 7 Spiders and 4 Sprints, a Ti, an SS, and a GTV behind the Register banner.  Some came in their moderns.  
Not to be confused with Bicester Outlet Village, Bicester Heritage is located on an old RAF airfield with large hangars built to shelter Bristol Blenheim and Avro Anson bombers as well Spitfires all used for training. Fittingly, the hangars are now home to various enterprises involved in restoring vintage aircraft and classic vehicles and training apprentices in these skills.  The event, held over two days is a wonderful combination of groups of aircraft and car enthusiasts, numbers are not overwhelming, and many dressed in period fashions or military uniforms complete with period picnic accoutrements. It is all quite relaxed with a refreshing lack of the hungry commercialism now to the fore in some other events. 
On the ground, there was a figure-of-eight course laid out for demonstration runs by the many historically interesting cars and motorcycles brought to the event, with several drivers obviously and entertainingly pushing their vehicles very hard. It was an intriguingly diverse collection and pleasing to see in action.              
We were treated to spectacular flying displays by aircraft of various vintages. A ‘squadron’ of nine original Tiger Moth biplanes performed daring manoeuvres in strong winds that sadly kept some other planes grounded. A Spitfire and a reproduction Messerschmitt conducted a mock dog fight. Old helicopters with apparently suicidal pilots did hair-raising stunts and a very brave or very deranged pilot put his stunt plane through tortuous, gravity-defying and smokey gyrations purely to thrill us all. 
The usual lunchtime group picnic mushroomed between the rows and cars were pushed further and further apart as all unfolded chairs and rugs and unpacked their food hampers. New members got to know long-time members and we were introduced to some lovely ‘new’ Giuliettas. Club Chairman, Richard Wigley, awarded Alan Suggett Best Spider, Jonathan Grantham Best Sprint, and Martin Everett Best Car for his beautiful red SS.  
The top-down weather continued all the way home.