HOME from the "emotional episode" of recalling her eye-witness memories of the 1927 total eclipse for millions of viewers as she watched last month's solar spectacle in Cornwall with TV presenters Michael Buerk, Phillippa Forrester and astronomer Patrick Moore, East Lancashire great-grandmother Mrs Bertha Warren was once more taken back decades by the recollections here a fortnight ago of the visits of aviation ace Sir Alan Cobham's flying circus to East Lancashire.

For 89-year-old Bertha, of Whalley Road, Langho, soared aloft with the Cobham crew show when it turned Chew Mill Farm at Billington into a flying field in June, 1932 - aboard one of the "five-bob flips" that folk could take in one of the show's Airspeed bi-planes that Sir Alan had designed.

She and her friend Edith Saddington had saved for weeks for the fare. For though five shillings is only the same as 25p today, it was a considerable sum 67 years ago.

And although she has travelled far by plane many times since, Bertha still clearly recalls that first flying-circus flip: "It was lovely - we flew all round the Ribble Valley. But when I think about it now, the plane must have been a rickety old thing.

"We had absolutely no protection and it was terribly cold up there."

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