From the RAF Museums page on its own Black Buck Vulcan ‘598,
“29 Apr 82 The first two Vulcans, XM598 flown by F/L Withers and crew and XM607
departed Waddington on a non – stop flight to Ascension Island supported by
Victor K2’s from Marham.Leaving Waddington at 0900 each Vulcan required
two in – flight refuellings, arriving at Wideawake at 1800 after a flight of 4000
nautical miles. Colour photo at Wideawake – Wingspan International May/June 2001 p.71.”
I reckon you might have seen the intensive pre mission in flight refuelling trials / practice. Don’t forget that Vulcans had previously had their AAR probes removed, and there was a mad scramble to find, and refit them prior to the missions, not to mention getting the systems to work again and train the crews.
……and there were two specific Air to Air Refuelling areas over Cornwall. One directly overhead, running from Yeovilton to St Mawgan (ARA 7 as it was back then) and another off the North Cornish coast running parallel with the coast (ARA 11??..12??..can’t remember). I remember seeing a Vulcan tanking from a C130 (…or maybe the other way around) one day in ’82 when I was on a visit to Tintagel.
So, as pagen says, it may have been training in one of these two areas that you were seeing. There was a lot of it going on at the time. Nimrod had a probe fitted to it for the first time and some already retired Vulcans rapidly returned to service, had tanks fitted in the bomb bay to act as tankers (50 Sqn) some C130’s were also converted to tankers to help out.
The two AAR areas are still there today, but the numbers have changed.
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