Please help solve this mystery which has been intriguing me for a long time.

In the summer of 1987 (or thereabouts) I was a student in Durham city, Durham county, UK. One day I was sitting at my desk next to the window working. I was on the top floor of a tall long terrace of houses of three or four stories (I think the street was called Old Elvet), which was on the edge of shallow valley so that I was overlooking the meadows towards the river. (Not the very steep valley near the cathedral).

I happened to look up, and was surprised to see a small airplane silently coming in a glide towards me (to be exact it was a little to one side) with the engine switched off. It was about to crash into the terrace of houses, but at literally the last second the engine was switched on and it just managed to hop over the roofs. I had not heard it before, so it may have had the engine turned off for a long time.

The aircraft was unusual. It was painted all over in the same shade of light grey - the same shade as an overcast sky. I presume this was to camoflage it against the sky. I do not remember any identification letters. It also had what I think might be called a rotary engine as I could see the piston cases arranged in a circle around the propellar shaft. The wings were fixed at the roof of the cabin. It was not a Cesna or any modern plane. It looked like something out of the 1930s or 1940s perhaps.

I would like to know, not so much which brand of plane it was, but who owned it?

It might perhaps have been a local Air Cadets group doing a training run, but this seemed incredibly dangerous to do, since if the engine had not started, or if there had been a slight miscalculation by the pilot, then he/she would have crashed and probably died.

I also had a very tenuous 'romantic' link (an unwanted and unwelcome link both then and now) with someone whom I have recently learn had become extremely successful in the entertainments industry at that time. So I have wondered if it was a spy plane used by the tabloid press or some freelancers to try to take a snap of me? (OK, so maybe I'm paranoid!)

Could anyone tell me anything about this mystery plane please? Thanks.

what time did you wake up?
dude it was a DREAM.

yeah I mean with that vivid of a description it had to be a dream. You sure you wasn't smoking something.

hey fred2 do you dream a lot or day dream?

it could be any number of light aircraft or homebuilts. there were a very large number of light observation aircraft built during world war 2 with many of those models continuing in manufacture for civilian use--even to this day. so basically without a picture or a very detailed description, it is extremely hard to identify the aircraft in question.