RAF Davidstow Moor explored

Kyt · Apr 5, 2009

Hidden things to see and do in Britain part two: Lesley Gillilan explores a disused Cornish airfield turned playground | Travel | The Observer

Lesley Gillilan explores a disused Cornish airfield turned playground

Roughly four miles north of Brown Willy, Cornwall's highest point, Davidstow Moor Airfield is one of those places that you stumble across when you're looking for somewhere else. I was brought up nearby, and remember wind-swept walks across its damp moorland heaths, but I've still got lost looking for it. After numerous revisits, I now know to turn off the A39 by the Dairy Crest cheese factory and rattle over a cattle grid onto the lonely road that crosses the remnants of its potholed second world war runways. The barracks and the hangars have long gone, but you can still see a few ruined buildings and the eerie shell of the airfield control tower, surrounded by flocks of roaming sheep and moorland ponies.

This is all that's left of RAF Davidstow Moor, a coastal command base between 1942 and 1945. Its airforce code name was DD (the chaps called it "Double Diamond"), and for the most part it was involved with search and rescue missions - picking up ditched aircrews from the English Channel - or dispatching Vickers Wellington aircraft on anti-submarine patrols across the Bay of Biscay. When it closed, the airfield was used as a motor racing track, the last race being a Formula One held in 1955. It's been empty ever since.

Apart from a sniff of military history, I come here for a bit of Cornish peace and quiet and the bleak beauty of the place, with its backdrop of Bodmin Moor hills. Davidstow's pocked runways are popular with microlighters, learner drivers, birdwatchers and cyclists (and you might see the odd army unit on exercise), but I saw no more than a handful of vehicles when I last bumped my bike over the scarred airfield onto the quiet moorland lane that leads up to Crowdy Reservoir.

I've driven over what's left of the aerodrome's three original runways - the longest is just over a mile long - until they peter out, melting into a belt of thick green forest. I've braved a visit to the control tower's atmospheric operations room (not strictly open to the public and not recommended without wellies and a tolerance for sheep poo). In winter, I've watched squadrons of roosting starlings - up to a million birds - swoop over the airfield at dusk.

In the summer (from Easter), the two small, private museums that lurk in the shadow of the cheese factory open. The larger of the two, the Cornwall at War Museum, run by Steve and Sheila Perry is devoted entirely to the history of this and other north Cornwall airfields, while the charming Davidstow Moor RAF Memorial Museum is more interested in the minutiae of wartime life. Housed in what used to be an RAF sergeants' shower block (with the original plumbing intact), the latter presents a busy collection of airfield memorabilia (stories, photographs, letters, clothing, the odd propeller), enhanced by a soundtrack of war-time songs with a suitably crackly gramophone quality. Ask the retired owners about the contentious plans to turn Davidstow's 280 hectares of derelict airfield into a wind farm - you could be there all day.

Davidstow Moor RAF Memorial Museum and Davidstow Airfield Cornwall at War Museum - Home Page Both at Davidstow, near Camelford, Cornwall
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Kyt · Apr 5, 2009

This is another excellent site, especially with the ORB and crash details

RAF Davidstow Moor Homepage

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