If "retrospectives" are allowed, the best in UK were Little Rissington/South Cerney when they housed CFS. Numerous charming pubs with cotswold ales; Cheltenham for a good lech, and the big smoke a couple of hours up the old A40 (used to do it a damn sight quicker than that in my old TR3 coming back early on Monday mornings). Overseas, Nicosia in the '50s and, as Samuel points out, Eastleigh. We had a couple of chaps down there on detachment flying Harvards against the Mau Mau (ha! ha!). I felt it my duty as their Flight Commander to visit them from time to time (4 stages in a Meatbox: Abu Sueir - Wadi Halfa - Khartoum - Juba - Eastleogh). The Eastleigh Mess was wild during the emergency. You had to watch your manners with the ladies because many of them were packing .32 pistols in their handbags, and one guy got himself shot. If I remember, Samuel, there was a sort of ravine between the mess and the hangars. Some chaps were walking the footpath from the mess to the hangars after breakfast one morning, nursing the usual hangover, when they were confronted by a lion. Quickest hangover cure you ever saw!
