As I stood in a small clearing next to the Fairford runway watching a Greek F-16 manoeuvring around in the sky I certainly questioned why I'd never been to an Air Tattoo before. 

I wouldn't consider myself an aviation enthusiast but I am definitely someone who often stops in my tracks whenever I have seen something unusual in the air, so I'm not really sure why I've never attended the massive airshow, I just hadn't. 

So as I prepared to make the short journey from Swindon to RAF Fairford I was actually quite excited at the prospect of seeing the Red Arrows, the Italian Fleece Tricolori and the South Korean Black Eagle display teams in real life rather than through dodgy photos taken on iPhones or YouTube videos of rehearsals shown beforehand. 

But first I had to navigate the dreaded traffic which I had heard a lot about and despite feeling like I had gotten away with it while on the A419 I soon encountered bumper-to-bumper queues on the exit to Kempsford, which weren't particularly pleasant during a hot weekend. 

40-minutes later I was at the entrance to the showground and was immediately overwhelmed by the number of planes, helicopters and, well, more planes of all shapes and sizes that were on display along the massive length of the runway - it was almost too many.

Initially choosing to ignore the static displays I headed straight to the press viewing area to see the aerial entertainment and within minutes I was convinced that I'd made a mistake not coming to RIAT sooner. 

As someone who has no idea of what it's like to fly a plane, It's difficult to judge the level of skill, control and danger needed to do what some of the pilots were doing simply to entertain the 50,000+ strong crowd that visited each day. 

It truly is awe-inspiring to see a perfectly in-sync aerobatics display with smaller planes flying towards each other at great speed and coloured smoke trailing behind them, a massive cargo plane doing an unnatural-looking barrel roll or the truly indescribably loud roar of the aforementioned F16. 

Some of the stunts elicited an audible sound of awe from the crowd while others, like an Italian pilot flying as high as he could, switching off the engines and free-falling, looked so dangerous that everyone was silent. 

But there's still plenty to do outside of the displays - one minute I was looking at a massive United States Government Airbus control centre, the next minute I was in the TechnoZone watching children try to fly drones through hoops and the next minute I was at a vintage tent listening to 'Winston Churchill' deliver his iconic Battle of Britain speech. 

The scale of the showground and the number of things to do and see is so vast that there are shuttle buses on offer to get you from one end to another, which I found a great way to get a brief snapshot of the whole area, and you can see the displays happen from pretty much anywhere.

It's safe to say that I definitely saw the appeal of why thousands flock to this event every year but having been thoroughly impressed by what I saw I do wonder if there'd be an element of jadedness creeping in - once you've seen one Red Arrows display you've seen them all, maybe?

Still, the whole weekend was great, the event's organisation was superb, and the sunshine, although definitely overbearing at times, helped, so I'd go as far as to say that it's something that everyone should go to at least once.