The proof of the pudding is in the.....making!

Long Weekend at Center Parcs, Longleat - Friday 1st September - Monday 4th September 2006

There are many different approaches to creating a culinary feats, but as any good cook will tell you it is not just about having the right ingredients that determines how good the finished dish will be, but rather the method and order in which they are combined.

Our weekend at Center Parcs, Longleat in part proved this point. The initial reason for the weekend was due to Moog having bought tickets for the Red Bull World Series Air Race which was to be raced at Longleat on 2nd September, and to which he invited not only 'yours truly', but both of his grandfathers as well.

For the event to be successful, it required the following "ingredients": -

1. Tickets
2. Convenient accommodation
3. World class aerobatic pilots
4. Impressive venue
5. Large crowds
6. Good event organisation
7. Good weather

Over the course of the weekend, all of the above ingredients were present....but unfortunately not at the right time or in the right order.

The 11 pilots demonstrated their amazing skills in the qualifying rounds on Friday, (when there was nobody there to see them) but the real event, in front of crowds of up to 100,000 was not due to take place until Saturday.

The weather was great on Friday and Sunday, but unfortunately Saturday, whilst warm, was wet and very, very windy.

The convenience of of accommodation at Center Parcs meant that we only had a 5 minute drive to the magnificent Longleat venue where we arrived at 11.00 am, in good time to see the start of the day's events at 12.15 pm...that is if there had been any events during the day.

Unfortunately, the weather was too bad for the event to take place at all or for the crowds to see anything.

The good event organisation that had got the crowds into the event, disappeared at the end of the day when the crowd was advised that "...it would most probably not be possible to see any flying" at around 4.00 pm. So we, (along with 99,996 others) spent a good hour queuing to get to the car park, and then two hours queuing (not that there was only one queue, there were about fourteen queues all trying to push into one) to get out!

Having left the viewing area at about 4pm we got out of the car park at just before 7pm. In one respect the fact that we then only had a five minute drive to our villa at Center Parcs was a bonus, but in another respect it was b@??!y annoying as it would only have taken us about 30 minutes to walk it had we been able to!

Next year we're going to see the race in Dubai, or Budapest or... anywhere that can guarantee warm, dry, calm weather...so basically anywhere outside of the UK.

All of the elements had been there, just not necessarily in the right order!!