Happy Christmas

World Heritage Sites Air Adventures: ENG LANDings
25 December 2025
Flight Log #2 – Happy Christmas
Guest Co Pilot & Narrator: Marisa Tomei

Christmas Day. Grey lid of sky, front seat of the Stearman, Cropduster behind me radiating “responsible adult,” and an entire nation of tea drinkers about to get jumped by coffee, ramen and spam musubi in the name of UNESCO. We slip the leash at EGBM and start speed running Britain’s bragging rights: Saltaire lined up like Victorian Lego, Jodrell Bank eavesdropping on the cosmos, Derwent Valley Mills and Ironbridge Gorge flexing, “We invented factories and iron bridges, you’re welcome—now perhaps pour something stronger than instant.”

Avebury and Stonehenge give us the ancient double take—wide stone hug, tight stone glare—with the Jurassic Coast and Bath acting as the pretty pages in between. Cornwall and West Devon’s mining landscape looks like the world’s hardest working scars; if any place has earned Kaʻū, Kona and a musubi instead of a sad service station pasty, it’s that. Canterbury’s cathedral abbey church trio slides under our wing and for one quiet minute even our lot remembers whose birthday this actually is.

London, of course, insists on a full performance: Maritime Greenwich on the meridian, Tower of London brooding with ravens, Westminster and the Abbey posing over the Thames like they’re on salary. Kew and Blenheim are the final straw—glass palaces and actual palace palaces—so the cargo ships retaliate by sprinkling Kona, Kaʻū, Hawaiʻi teas, spam musubi kits, ramen packs and Tiger Shark coins into nearby airfields like we’re modding the scenery with snacks.

Oxford gets Don’s Midnight Vigil: 60/40 Kona–Kaʻū, tastes of dark chocolate, posh marmalade and “I meant to read one chapter, now it’s tomorrow.” Served in chipped college mugs with a cocoa Tiger Shark on top; after the second round, no one is brave enough to say “instant” out loud. Cambridge (EGSC) gets The Full Commonwealth: tonkotsu ish broth with British beef bones and a naughty splash of brown ale, noodles, egg, pork, spam, buttered peas and one offended roast potato wedge trying to work out where it went wrong. A tiny Union Jack keeps falling into the bowl and being rescued; it’s the most literal metaphor for the year anyone needs.

End of the night, we’ve given Britain mills, mines, stones, spires, telescopes, gardens, volcanic coffee and misfit ramen—and, tucked underneath all the cheek, a quiet reminder that this whole wild feast hangs on one baby in one manger in one forgotten corner of the map. Happy Christmas to you and yours—may the Lord bless you richly as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the true light of the world and the real reason this ridiculous, wonderful circus even exists.

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