Wings Over Wairarapa

Wings Over Wairarapa is an annual air show held in Masterton, where planes new and old, and other military equipment, are on show. It’s held over the weekend of the Wellington Anniversary holiday, which this year falls on 19^th January. We’d decided to keep an eye on the weather, as the initial forecast (10 days ago) was for rain, followed by rain, and more rain. However, given the Met Service’s noted reliability on long-range forecasts (not good), by the time the event came round the forecast was for sunshine, sunshine, and more sunshine; and being in the Wairarapa, notably higher temperatures were expected than prevail in Wellington (it’s not called “the coolest little capital in the world” for nothing – it’s always a few degrees cooler than everywhere else) – hitting around 30°. The main attractions are flying displays and old planes, and rides are available in a variety of aircraft (including a spitfire for the princely sum of $3,750 for 20 minutes – you can get to London for that price, but not in that time).

We were up early as I wanted to get of Wellington out by 9:00 am, as it takes a couple of hours to get to Masterton. As it happened, we appeared to be making good time, although there was noticeably more traffic going over the Rimutaka Hill Road than we'd normally expect to see. We decided to stop off for a coffee in Greytown, and this may have been a mistake, as traffic was almost at a standstill when we left Greytown and through Carterton. We arrived at around 11:30. The shows had started at 11:00am so we missed the beginning.

No matter. Things were soon in full force, with demonstration flying of jets, helicopters and propeller planes. There was also a collection of Bren carriers on display, as well as other military vehicles. We grabbed a light lunch of venison burger from the food and wine village, where a number of stalls served slightly more upmarket foods than the standard hotdog stalls (one of them was run by Zibibbo, but I didn't actually fancy anything on their menu). We met up with Nick, one of our dancing chums, who was there with family, and also bumped into Andy, a work colleague. All this being arranged beforehand - we were expecting to see them.

The displays continued all afternoon. We took a quick detour round to see some of the static displays of WW1 and WW2 aircraft, and also had a look inside a modern helicopter - one of which had been doing the flight display earlier, demonstrating how they were used in a "hot" battlefield situation.

Talking of hot, yes, it reached a blistering 30° in the afternoon, and we spent a little time tracking down some sunblock (as we'd foolishly left ours in the car). We found some at the information tent.

A lot of the people there were far better prepared than we were, with wind shelters, gazebos, table and chairs with their picnics. We'd come "as is" expecting to pick up all we needed when we were there, and managed pretty well with the exception of having somewhere to sit down. Next time we'll bear that in mind.

The heat and the walking around were eventually getting to us, and we decided to skip the final event of the day - a WW2 dogfight - and try and beat the traffic home. We left at around 3:30, and, amazingly, there were still people coming in! Presumably just to see that last event.

We got home and washed the Wairarapa dust from our feet. There was a lot of it!