Campaign Week 2: The Touchdown Cafe

The café acts as the social hub of the airfield and works with the local Welcombe Hills School, helping to teach pupils how to place orders while also offering work experience placements to other youngsters.

Mat Timms, general manager at the Touchdown Café, said: “I grew up on this airfield really, my dad used to fly and I used to go around on my motorbike while he was up in the air. The area would lose out massively if the airfield was to close. You’ve got to look at it like closing one of the main stations on the tube network, aviation is a network too and Wellesbourne is a big part of that.

“The airfield’s heritage is definitely something that attracts people here, 315 pilots lost their lives from this site. I had a guy from Canada come here recently to see the place because of its wartime past and we get a lot of other families coming here because of that too.

“I was very saddened to get the letter from the owners. I have no interest in running a café if it wasn’t here and it would be the end of that if the airfield closed. You can see from our prices that we’re not in this to make a lot of money, we just love being here.

“As much as I would like to think people come to the café to see me, I know they are really here because it is on the airfield, you can’t get a view like this anywhere else.

“Wellesbourne Airfield really is the jewel in the crown of aviation in this country.”