Thanks Chugalug, I can imagine you peering over the coaming and I'm very glad it was you and not me! Another childhood memory was being shown a 617 Sqn Lincoln at Binbrook in 1950 after return from the annual Shalluffa exercises with my father's 9 Sqn. The port fuselage side was corrugated like a Ju52 after encountering a Cb near the Pyrenees, another 617 machine was lost around that period.
Thirty-two years later my fiance and I were on our way to the Algarve in our Arrow, night-stopping at San Sebastien as usual. The met man was quite animated, I learned the apt Spanish word for Cb is tormenta, and there were tormenta aplenta all the way across Spain. Immediately the Lincoln writeoff came to mind. We nipped back to Biarritz for a sunny day on the beach, booked another night in the comfy Hotel Alcazar (dbb £21 for two), and enjoyed a smooth trip to Faro next day with nary a wrinkle on airframe or driver. Mind you, driver has made up his wrinkle stock since ...