Winterscapes from the air

A couple of flights in January 2016, with clear skies, a touch of haze and patches of ground mist. Taken in the area around Didcot in England, Silverstone and near Stokenchurch, these images capture an essence of the joys of winter flying.

Silverstone Circuit is a motor racing circuit in England next to the Northamptonshire villages of Silverstone and Whittlebury. The circuit straddles the Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire border, with the current main circuit entry on the Buckinghamshire side. The Northamptonshire towns of Towcester (5 miles) and Brackley (7 miles) and Buckinghamshire town of Buckingham (6 miles) are close by, and the nearest large towns are Northampton and Milton Keynes.

Silverstone is the current home of the British Grand Prix, which it first hosted in 1948. The 1950 British Grand Prix at Silverstone was the first race  in the newly created World Championship of Drivers. The race rotated between Silverstone, Aintree and Brands Hatch from 1955 to 1986, but relocated permanently to Silverstone in 1987.

The Didcot Power Station complex comprise an active natural-gas power plant (Didcot B Power Station) that supplies the National Grid, and a closed combined coal and oil power plant (Didcot A Power Station). They are situated immediately adjoining one another in the civil parish of Sutton Courtenay, next to the town of Didcot in Oxfordshire (formerly in Berkshire), in the UK. The combined power stations feature a chimney which is one of the tallest structures in the UK, and three hyperbolic cooling towers (demolished in 2019 – three others were demolished in 2014), which can be seen from much of the surrounding landscape.