The water is calm, the sun shines between parted clouds over forested edges. The engine has been fired, the internals are warm, and the sun glistens on the water. As she heads down Coniston at speed for the first time in 59 years, a new chapter has started. Bluebird is home.
The UK's most famous vessel returned to the site where its driver, Donald Campbell, was brutally killed last week and I was privileged enough to watch it. As I walked along the shore of the lake in the Lake District, there was a chill over the water. This was the place where it happened.
As I stood, I spoke with a man and his son and his two dogs; the son left and I was invited to sit on the empty camping chair. The father and I spoke of many things, dogs, coffee, wine, Coniston, and of course, Bluebird. The boat, made famous more by her accident in 1967 then her record in 1956, had been in my life since I was first told about the crash as a 12-year-old.
I'd made a wooden model of K7 at school, listened to both versions of Marillion's song about the crash called Out Of This World. I'd even quoted a BBC documentary about K7's driver Donald Campbell in my final undergraduate exam at university. Here I was, standing by that lake in front of the grave in which Donald lay. Behind her pilot, sitting in a large white tent, was K7 herself.
Lying with her engine cover off, no photos were allowed until she was in the public areas, I was taken in by a fellow journalist who had been there all week. As I stood there looking at her, I choked up and nearly cried.
The poor mechanics in front of me had been working on K7 all week, although it had been feared weather might scupper K7's chances of running. It was the boat herself who seemed not to want to go.
If we are to think of boats, and cars, as having souls of their own it seemed as if K7 was nervous about returning to the place of her greatest pain. Yes, she had pootled around on Monday, but it seemed she did not want to run any faster than that, like a human being running on a healed injury.
This sense of unsettlement was reflected not just in how I felt on the day, but by Donald Campbell's nephew Don Wales, who admitted his own reservations about the matter. He admitted as such as we walked through the paddock. He had been on a journey of his own once his uncle's boat floated on the water.
Don, a record breaker in his own right, told me: "I've always had mixed reservations and mixed emotions about seeing my uncle's boat on Coniston again, but when they launched K7 on Monday and the boat just touched the water we had a minute's silence and the emotions were very very strong, I had grit in my eyes I think. [It] sent shivers down my spine, all the way down through my legs, it was incredibly emotional. And then seeing the boat being towed out to the starting point and seeing her fired up, hearing her fired up and just doing steering tests, it's an awesome sight it really is, it's absolutely fantastic and it gives you a measure of my uncle."
And that change of perspective happened to me too, K7 had seemed like a shadow over Coniston, but I was wrong. K7, far from being seen as a shadow is a shimmer. It is as if the village of Coniston sees her as a family member returned home. Now, is the next stage, because even as the week continued, there were talks of a 'Bluebird Legacy'.
In a café in the village I met Gillian and Douglas Hodgson of Coniston Launch. They spoke of what it meant for Bluebird to be home and the hope that she will bring more people to a village just over the brow from the famous Windermere.
"I think there will be the Bluebird legacy for Coniston and I think that business and trade will improve. Coniston will be really put on the map for a lot of people and hopefully lots of tourists will come, stay for day trips in Coniston and we think this is going to be a massive boat for our business," Gillian told me.
Gillian's business also has a connection to the recovery of Donald, whose funeral took place the day after 9/11 on September 12, 2001. One of the two boats that came with the business, Ruskin and Ransom, carried Donald's body when it was brought to shore. Both boats are gone now, replaced by Campbell and Cygnet.
It was through Gillian and others that my view of the relationship between K7 and Coniston had changed, and my perspective was changed in turn. K7 was with people who loved her and now at a place with which she could have a new relationship, her return closed the chapter of a book that had been open since January 4 1967. As she planed on the water, a new one had been started on May 15, 2026.
