July 8, 2015
Chester, England: The fighter in the hedge
IT'S NOT every day you peer into someone's hedge and find a jet fighter in there. Not in any state to fly, it's true, but that would be asking too much.
We'd ridden into Wrexham, still in Wales, and shivered into a café in the spacious but soulless, closed shopping street. Something went wrong on the way in and we didn't get to see Bersham Ironworks. I was disappointed. It was where John "Iron Mad" Wilkinson worked 200 years ago, an eccentric, bad-tempered man who hit on a way to cut spiral grooves into cannon barrels to make them fire straighter.
Wrexham has an exhibition about him, not hiding that he supplied both sides in the American war of independence and anyone else prepared to pay cash.
But Dodleston was the main attraction. There's not much to it, just a crossroads, silent houses and a church with a fall-apart graveyard. In the graveyard, packing up, were half a dozen men in bright yellow jackets. Some were standing, unpressed, and others were walking to a white van labelled with some reference to service to the community.
"We're offenders," said a cheerful, round-faced man who looked like he'd enjoyed a few drinks over the years. His Liverpool accent fell to the ground and wriggled in excitement. "I'm one myself, like. Driving offender, me. And this is what we do. We come out and work for the community. I like it, t'be honest."
The grass in the graveyard lay in swathes. It'd grown to quite a length before the work party arrived.
"These old graveyards, they're something special, aren't they?" Dave said. "Bit of England, like. If we don't maintain them, who's going to?"
He wasn't from round there but we asked anyway about the hidden plane. They all knew about it. I never found out how, although they'd parked close to it. Maybe it was well known.
Dave took us there, pressing through a metre or two of undegrowth and fresh bushes. And there, in parts but still recognisable, was what remained of a De Havilland Vampire.
"Don't know how it got there," Dave said. "Some guy in the house there, doesn't like people on his land, like. But I reckon we're OK."
It's going back a bit, the Vampire. The 1950s. It was one of those planes from the brief era when the tail was held in place not by the fuselage - which came to a short end - but by parallel booms that supported the tail and the rear wing. The pilot sat in a cockpit nailed to the front of the jet.
There were three and a half thousand of them, apparently, and all over the world. And for some reason one ended up in this hedge. Someone set fire to the nose and cockpit years back but the nose was still there and what was left of the wings and the fuselage.
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But why? How?
I have no idea.
This was always going to be a short day, to give us a look round Chester. It's a beautiful city of timbered buildings. Three kilometres of walls circle the city centre. The shops in one long street, the Rows, are on two levels. It's a striking centre and well worth a short day to see.
Today's ride: 46 km (29 miles)
Total: 1,503 km (933 miles)
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