Military Vehicle Show at Yorkshire Air Museum

If you fancy a day out with something a bit different to look at, the Yorkshire Air Museum is bringing back its annual Military Vehicle Show later this month. It runs from Saturday 28 August to Monday 30 August, so it's spread across the bank holiday weekend, which makes it easy to slot in. The show fills the site with a wide array of historic military vehicles, and there's plenty of family activities running alongside, so it's as much for kids as it is for anyone with a genuine interest in old machinery.

The best part is how easy it is to get in. Admission to the show is included with regular museum entry, so there's no special ticket to buy on top of what you'd already pay to see the collection. It's worth booking online beforehand, though, because it saves you a bit of money and, more importantly, secures you free re-entry to the museum for the rest of the year, which is a nice bonus if you're the sort of person who likes to come back.

It's also worth knowing what you're actually visiting. The museum sits on the site of the former RAF Elvington airfield, a RAF Bomber Command station from the Second World War, and it's the largest independent aviation museum in the UK. It's also the only Allied Air Forces Memorial in Europe, which gives the whole place a bit of weight. It first opened to the public in the mid-1980s and now holds more than 50 aircraft and more than 20 historic vehicles, backed by a registered archive of over 500,000 historical objects and documents, so there's a lot to get stuck into beyond the show itself.

A couple of the aircraft worth keeping an eye out for are the Blackburn Mercury Monoplane replica, built for Yorkshire Television in 1979 for the drama series 'Flambards', and the Avro 504K replica, which was built by apprentices at RAF Halton and has had a busy life since, including a stint at the Hotel Les Invalides in Paris. Both give you a sense of the kind of history the place is built on.

Practically, the museum is open from 10:00 to 17:00 every day, with last entry at 16:00, and it stays open all year round. Around 90% of the site is accessible, and there's a shop, a café, a cinema, a woodland walk and picnic areas, so it's the kind of place you can settle into for a few hours rather than just a quick look round. If you're planning to go, booking ahead is the sensible move, both for the cheaper entry and the free return visits. It's a straightforward day out, and with the show running across the bank holiday weekend, it's an easy one to build a day around.