The Davidstow Airfield and Cornwall at War Museum

There is also Davidstow Chedder cheese so it must be a little part of Somerset as well.

Has anybody visited this museum recently and can give me a heads up on what the place is like and what is actually there?
I’m thinking of taking a bus load of Air Cadets there but am not sure exactly what the place is like.

They also have the cockpit of Vampire XK427

There Must Be A ‘Better Ole’.

Davistow Moor is certainly a God-forsaken spot. It must have been a very depressing and unpopular posting. It had a very poor reputation for operability due to weather and visibility during the war. It’s only good point was that it was sometimes above the fog….! I think some hardy microlighters still use it, but despite having spent a lot of my life in the SW I confess that I had no idea there was any museum there.

Harrowbeer was built on a moor too, but near the south, rather than north coast of the peninsula, and probably at a somewhat lower elevation. It was closed after the war, but when some of the locals heard that there were plans to move Plymouths airport from it’s cramped pre-war site to Harrowbeer, they had the runways torn-up. Ironically, many of those same activists were eastern ex-RAF eastern Europeans who had had settled in the area after the war…..

Plymouth Airport is too small and the local council have, as they usually do, allowed far too much building to encroach upon it’s boundaries. There were more recent suggestions of using Harrowbeer, but it’ll never happen. It’s just a common used by dog-walkers now. At ground-level, there is little to see now, except a few fighter-pens, but from the air it shows-up very well.

It’s worth noting that there are two museums at Davidstow Moor, the one mentioned above (http://www.cornwallatwarmuseum.co.uk/index.html) covers the wider remit of Cornwall at war as suggested in the title, the other one (Davidstow Moor RAF Memorial Museum http://www.davidstowmemorialmuseum.co.uk/ ) is more airfield itself dedicated.

For me though, and as Rob says, the airfield itself is the main attraction, I’ve never been to any other that has quite the same atmosphere as this place.
If you catch it on a sunny day you can see for miles across the moors (UK’s highest airfield elevation), if it’s foggy you really get the feeling of isolation and the danger that the based crews must have faced daily.
The airfield is very easily accessible as it is on open land on the moors, it looks like the first museum includes tours of it anyway.

On a related note, is Harrowbeer worth a visit?

The ex Flambards Gannet ECM.6 XG831 is on display there. But for me visiting the nearby RAF Davidstow Moor control tower (derelict) and gazing out onto the runways and taxiways is worth the journey itself.

Rob