East Sands
Note: This map only gives a rough location within the UK. Good enough for this 'Guide' but hardly satisfactory. If anybody can kindly provide a more precise position, this advice will be most welcome.
EAST SANDS: Pleasure or ‘Joy ride’ flying venue
Location: Close to or in RHYL, opposite Plasa Tirion Terrace
Period of operation: 1919 to 1920 only?
NOTES: It appears that after the success of the Easter operation, (see RHYL), the Avro Transport Company were based at EAST SANDS for the Whit weekend, (7th June 1919), “when a large section of beach was flagged off”. Discharged soldiers were employed to keep the landing area clear of the public. Although this aviation activity was highly popular during daylight hours it seems that “there was also some trespassing at night by courting couples who resented their traditional mating grounds being roped off and their lustful activities curtailed! Flares fired from Very pistols soon ended this nuisance!”
PROMOTING AVIATION
It seems that the good burghers of Rhyl were keen to promote aviation, to the extent of planning to have a scheduled air service serving the town which perhaps unhappily didn’t materialise. Avro did however operate for seventeen weeks without incident for the ‘summer season’ using three of the latest Avro 504 types flown by ex RAF pilots Major MacInnes, Capt. Heriot and Lt. Hudson. ‘Joy rides’ from EAST SANDS cost £1.1s.0d for a ‘Short circuit’ over Rhyl, Foryd and Prestatyn, whereas a longer flight over St Asalph, Rhuddlan-Bodelwyddan and Abergele cost £2. 2s. 0d as did ‘looping the loop’.
The local record for a ‘pleasure flying’ passenger must surely go to Col. Malcolm A Colquhoun based at Kinmel Camp - who paid for over twenty flights involving every known ‘stunt’.It appears that the Avro Transport Company set up operations here in 1920 but for various reasons the enterprise soon floundered and ceased abruptly.
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