During this time, members of the team will need somewhere to stay. We have very kindly been offered accommodation at the St. George Hotel, who have been very helpful to us before.

St George Hotel is located on site at Durham Tees Valley Airport and provides excellent rooms, bar, restaurant and wedding/conference facilities. It’s ideal if you’re flying out of the airport.

For a fantastic room rate, visit St. George Hotel at http://www.stgeorgehotel.net/

Or call them on 01325 332631. Be sure to mention Save The Trident!

She had been laid up at London Heathrow in the BA maintenance area for a while, with her stablemates all being scrapped or sent to fire grounds around the country. Finally, the call came to send her up to Teesside Airport (as Durham Tees Valley was then known) on a cold December day in 1983. On the flight deck that day was Dick Boas  as Captain, Colin Rule as Engineer and a young First Officer named Chris Barnes. He was an aircraft enthusiast as well as a Trident pilot and had to ‘bid’ for the chance to be part of the crew for this historic flight.

As luck would have it, Chris documented the day in a series of photographs showing G-ARPO at Heathrow, flying up over the wintry countryside, then making its approach and landing at Teesside. On the ground there, he was marshalled into place by our own Peter Foster, who is today part of the Save The Trident team.

As if this stroke of luck wasn’t enough (we could never have dreamed of a better display of photographs of our aircraft than those covering its last flight), Chris also happened to have a number of items of cockpit instrumentation from G-ARPO. He has sent these to us to put back in their original place!

A big thanks go out to Chris Barnes for this kind gesture and for showing us his photographs of the day. You can be sure they’ll form part of the display when G-ARPO is restored at the museum. In the meantime, have a look below:

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Following an arduous journey across to Belfast and back, via Sunderland to drop off parts into storage at the North East Aircraft Museum, the pair will have earned a rest, so we’re really grateful for St. George Hotel’s offer.

I already know first-hand what a great hotel it is, and quite historic too. It is situated in the former RAF Officer’s Mess at what was RAF Middleton St. George. Today it’s the perfect place to spend the night when flying in or out of Durham Tees Valley Airport, or when in the Teesside area. You can visit their site at http://www.stgeorgehotel.net/

With Peter’s help, we have gained access to a Cherry Picker, and also should be able to remove a lot of the scrap metal inside the airframe that is no longer needed at no cost.

We look forward to his help in our bid to save G-ARPO.