Cottesmore was far better, traffic wise - I left home (about 1 hour away) early, expecting to queue for ages, drove straight in and walking around by 9 am.
OK, I thought, but it's bound to be chocker when we leave - again no, it was an absolute breeze. A friend of mine was driving up to Yorkshire on the Saturday, saw the signs and thought "Aaargh! I forgot about the airshow!"
The signs were all he saw - no traffic on the A1 at all.
Now, I know that you can get an awful lot of aircraft into Fairford, but it's not centrally placed to allow everyone in the UK a reasonable drive to get there; it could also be taken away as a public venue, much as Mildenhall has been before. I always used to go to the Air Tattoos, but I don't do Fairford because of the traffic, and the 2001 show at Cottesmore was a belter; do you really need 400 aircraft to make a good airshow?