The Incident at Swindon
Written by Pete Lake
If my memory serves me correctly, it would be some Twenty Eight years ago, around 1969/70 that I had my first, and last, (to date) encounter with a UFO. I was to the weekend with a friend and his parents who lived in Swindon, Wiltshire, and was greatly looking forward to this, as we both enjoyed motoring, and in those days the Wiltshire roads and country lanes were almost void of traffic compared to London.

So early that Saturday morning, I started the engine of my trusty old Hillman and prepared myself for the ninety five mile journey to come, for it was quite an adventure to motor that sort of distance in an old banger! (But when you are young you can conquer the world). I arrived at my destination, some two and half hours later and having been fed and watered so to speak, we began discussing as what to do that evening. The cinema was suggested, but as there wasn't much showing in Swindon that weekend, my friend came up with an idea, we were to drive to Bath, so that's exactly what we did.

It was about eleven o clock, when we started back to his place, it was a clear warm summer night, and upon reaching the main road back to Swindon, we found that this had been closed due to an accident.

We took a chance on a small country lane, which seemed to run adjacent to the main road, as we had no deadline to be home, we said what the hell!

After driving along for some fifteen minutes or so, I began to hear a droning noise, which sounded like a distant small plane. Upon looking out of the car window, I saw some sort of Aircraft, I then looked back and continued to chat to my mate, but then after a few seconds something registered in my mind, I couldn't recall seeing any wings? So I had another glance, and I was right "no wings"! I then started to slow the car right down to a crawl, which in doing so allowed me to see that  the object was cigar shaped, with a series of portholes, or you could call them windows. The object was about the size of a small holiday jet plane, the size of a 737 Boeing.

Another factor that struck me being a little bit odd, was that the noise level was very low for something that was only about six times as high as a large barn. I had now completely stopped the car, and we both began observing the object, with great trepidation, I may also add, the object seemed to be hovering over us at an n alarming low level. It was at that point we both became very scared, so I took off like a bat out of hell, driving as fast as the bendy country lane would allow, for about one minute or so, the UFO (I will call it that for now, for neither me or my friend did not know what the object was) seemed to follow us, and after what seemed like eternity, we reached the end of the lane, as it came out to a big roundabout, which lied adjacent to the road we would have had to have taken, so it was a good guess on our part.

There wasn't a vehicle or person around, so we decided to stop the car and see if there was any sign of the object. Sure enough we could see the object hovering about a mile or two away, above some very tall trees.

Whilst driving along the road a few minutes earlier, we had decided that our UFO was a Zeppelin shaped balloon (because of its low altitude and noise level it certainly wasn't a plane or helicopter). But our theory was to be dismissed, after all balloons don't hover still to my knowledge.

We observed the UFO for a good five minutes, which had now become a silhouette above the distant trees. Then suddenly the strangest of things happened, a series of multi coloured lights began being emitted from the craft, which looked like was ground level. This lasted approximately two minutes, and then the object lowered itself down vertically behind the trees, and it was the last we saw of it.

The following morning having worked out that Lyneham Military Airforce Base was in that direct vicinity, we decided to drive out there and confront them with our sighting. We got to the Airport gates, but we began having second thoughts, because if it were only an experimental aircraft, they would only deny it, and if it was not from this earth they would most certainly would have seen it and probably still deny it!.

My own thoughts on this are that it was an experimental craft from the Military Base, but who knows?
It may also interest you to know that several years later, my good friend whilst riding through Warminster on his motorcycle, observed a large orange ball, the size of the sun moving slowly across the horizon. It wasn't the sun (that was already set in the sky) and as shooting stars move much faster and they burn out within seconds, this poses another mystery?

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