Over the weekend, I ended up watching an 'old' episode of "Wheeler Dealers" (sad, I know!); and it was seemingly based on an old airfield with light-green painted hangers that looked like overgrown nissen huts, loads of trees around the airfield and planes dotted around (so still in use?).
If you really did have nothing better to do and watched episodes of Top Gear you may have noticed that these programs were filmed at Kemble. I think that they were asked to leave because of the damage that they were doing to the main runway surface with their antics. The only redeeming feature of these programs was that they featured a very young Kate Humble. As you can guess I am not a Clarkson fan.
They then moved to Elvington and Dunsfold (and Kate left to do better things !)
If you really did have nothing better to do and watched episodes of Top Gear you may have noticed that these programs were filmed at Kemble. I think that they were asked to leave because of the damage that they were doing to the main runway surface with their antics. The only redeeming feature of these programs was that they featured a very young Kate Humble. As you can guess I am not a Clarkson fan.
They then moved to Elvington and Dunsfold (and Kate left to do better things !)
They also filmed at Bentwaters didn't they? Probably in more recent times.
I will have to stop watching those (less than sparkling) old "Wheeler Dealer" programmes - even when they are the only thing on tele.
As for Top Gear... I must be a masochist! I still watch it and (usually) end up thinking that it is a load of tripe these days. And didn't someone recently say that Clarkson is worth £30 million? I can act the oaf and feel lucky if I've got £3.00 in my pocket.
Thinking about it again they must have used Bentwaters as well. When I visited a while back there was the rusting, abandoned giant "loop-the-loop" that they used in one of the programmes, just sat by a building there.
The filming at bentwaters is usually for special stunts for a couple of reasons.
1) Bickers action enterprises (stunt designers and co ordinators) live nearby, well about 20 miles.
2) The Huge runway is in peachy condition.
3) It's accessible from that London.
I have a mate that runs a specialist Fire service for events and often covers such things at Bentwaters. Infact the whole fire crew were seen right at the end of the first episode of 'driving wars' also filmed at Bentwaters.
Not airfield related, but the TG episode where they shot cars into a pit/target like darts was also a Bickers Action thing and filmed at former Claydon cement works also nearby. Bickers action was formed when (for those of a certain age) Dave Bickers was world motorcycle scramble champion and was asked to do a film stunt. The business grew from there to being a world leader.
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