RAF High Wycombe - twinned with MARS! (High Wycombe in General)

Member Name: raypdaley182

Product:	High Wycombe in General
Date:	16/10/08 (12 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great travel links

Disadvantages: Expensive place to live

In Buckinghamshire, England. It's very green most of the year, possibly THE greenest place I've ever lived. There is a lot of National Trust land around the area. Roald Dahl lived fairly close and if you read the book "Danny, Champion of the world" and then go to High Wycombe from the North by train in the Autumn you will see what he meant. Pheasants everywhere!

High Wycombe has tons of hills, hence the name. Interesting places to go include The West Wycombe caves (Home of the Hell Fire Club), also visit the church and mausoleum above the caves, a Hammer film was made there!

There is good travel access to pretty much everywhere, High Wycombe being located on the M40 motorway so you can go north to the Midlands or south to London. There is also the Chiltern Train service. Wembley Stadium is only a few stops down the line!

If you ever watch the show "Vicar Of Dibley", the motorway that is flown over is the M40, it's right before the 1st exit to High Wycombe. From November 1990 to January 1996 I lived in High Wycombe because I was stationed there in the RAF. I served at Headquarters Strike Command (now know as HQAir). This is the admin centre of the fighting Air Force. All the admin for the good stuff is done here. When I arrived I worked in Command Supply Registry, Supply 4 MT 4 section.

I had been there less than a month before I was detached away to work on my War Role working in the Primary War Head Quarters. This was just before the 1st Gulf War kicked off so we were pretty damn busy. I worked down there (It's underground!) for over a year. When it finally came for me to go back to my real job I didn't have a real job to go back to. I'd been replaced. So I was moved into the Receipt & Dispatch Registry. This job was excellent because it was me and lots of civilians delivering the mail.

This makes you a VERY important person, especially at the end of the month when the wage slips come. Everyone wants 'em quick and your suddenly Mr. Popular! I was in this job and getting people their mail or wage slips quickly started to become profitable. You could avoid guard duty or Ground Defence Training, I went nearly 3 years on the unit before I did either of these. Strike Command is a weird place, it's an RAF base, with a Command Base, a War HQ, and a NATO base. They even have a small amount of Royal Engineers working for the RAF there.

Tons of weirdly uniformed foreigners saluting airmen. You have to smile & wave at them and shake your head in that international symbolic gesture of "No, you don't salute me. I'm a nobody" I was part of the ACE exchange programme while I was there. It's not really super classified so I'll explain. If you want useful info read Janes Defence Weekly, it's fully explained in very exact detail in there. (What military secrets?)

Back in the 1980's when Reagan and Gorbachov signed the mutual disarming treaty NATO said that the Reds could come and visit any base and we could do vice-versa. When the Reds come each member of the visiting group has an exact opposite to stay with them, you are the equivalant rank to the Boris (Russian Air force guy, easier to call em Boris) you go everywhere he goes and make sure he doesn't see what he shouldn't.

You answer all the questions that the treaty says you must, and you have to be on constant standby for them to visit. They don't have to give any notice their coming, you have to be ready to get up from your normal job and leg it over to where they are and then ferry them around the unit showing them stuff they want to see. They came, I can't really say much more than that.

It's got some seriously nice pubs in the High Street (I can highly recommend The Hob Goblin if its still there) and it's a fairly compact city centre so everything is easy to walk to from the central bus depot. You'll probably get bored with its selection of places to shop but there are lots of other good cities in easy range of travel, I used to go to Reading on the bus quite a lot.

(originally written on H2G2 by me)

Summary: Green & nice to cycle around