The Enid Blyton Society

Well, if she used those special wings from The Mountain of Adventure, I'd say the answer is 'NO!'

Hmmm...Wonder if her inspiration for the Areodrome base in Billycock hill came from her Brother's involvement with the R.A.F.?

Just reading the children's descriptions of flying in Bill's plane in the first chapter of The Valley of Adventure makes me wonder if Enid ever did have at least one flight in her life — could her brother have taken her up one time? She includes some quite vivid and realistic details like "we went far, far higher than the clouds... I looked down on them and they didn't look like clouds a bit. They looked like a great big snow-field", "our house looked like a toy one", "it's frightfully exciting flying at night, and seeing the little pin-pricks of light shining up from the dark countryside." But I guess she could also have taken those from other people's descriptions, or from her own imagination.

I often feel that Enid's descriptions, vivid as they usually are, were taken from other people's writing, newspaper reports, photos, and maybe films of the day. The whole of the Adventure series comes across as very 'filmic' to me - even the last lines, and often a long distance shot as the adventure comes to an end. Just my feeling, of course - not sure how many films Enid went to see at the cinema, but I've always felt some of her ideas (such as the Mountain folk in Secret Mountain' come across as very much like the films and novels of her day, obviously painted with her imagination too.