Maverick & Iceman reunited.. What out France here we come...

The demise of Marky and Sammy will hopefully be positive on one front, by being the start of brighter things and more focussed flying. It has now been transformed into an all male experience, shared by myself and Matt, a.k.a. ‘Maverick and Iceman’. Although the original road trip style plan of touring France has been greatly built upon and generally expanded to a much larger scale, the basic principles of the original idea sill remain. These are to take VA over to the continent and explore, explore and explore some more! This will hopefully offer a wider variety of experience, mainly on an aviation level, but also on the more general cultural and social levels. The plan is to spend the days flying and the nights in bed and breakfasts. That is unless we are lucky enough to meet some beautiful rural farm girls who don’t understand a word of English and merely fall for our good looks and charisma… best get booking the BnB’s early then I guess!!! The encounters with different kinds of weather systems, airfield layouts, air traffic operations and will hopefully provide a pleasurable, albeit perhaps sometimes stressful experience, whilst greatly increasing our knowledge of the trade.

By the time August arrives, we both will have been qualified pilots for almost a year. The journey will hopefully begin on Monday 30th July, when we depart Barton for Sandown, Isle of Wight, routing through a variety of Class D controlled airspace and MATZ’s along the way. This will be the first scheduled fuel stop, both for VA and for us along with the last footing on English soil until we return. The plan is to then fly on to Clamecy, in the Bourgogne region of France. Being a small grass airstrip, the skills used to land should be similar to those required at Barton. Although it is hoped that the weather will be slightly better! This will be out first overnight resting spot. The plan for day two is to plod on to Marseilles, in the Provence region, where the looming international airport should require some very different techniques during both the approach and landing stages of the journey. Should be interesting! Apparently some of the approaches bring you in right over the Mediterranean! Wow! Day three will see us route from Marseilles to Nice on the Cote D’Azur, a place of luxury and hopefully plentiful sunshine. Fingers crossed that we will get to test the sea as well as the food.

The next leg of the trip will be the longest and most enduring flight of the journey, flying from Nice to La Rochelle, the Atlantic seaport and provincial capital of the Charente-Maritime region. Due to the fact that I prefer to have at least one hour of reserve fuel left in the tanks upon shutdown, it will be necessary to stop along this 386NM stretch in order to fuel VA. Although the exact place of choice has not yet been decided, I believe that the chosen airfield will lie within the Limousin region. After rest and recuperation in La Rochelle, we will track up North along the Atlantic Coast towards Ouessant, a small island off the coast of Brest in Western Bretagne. This island, which apparently gets very busy during the summer months is home to a national local sized airport, and should provide an interesting treat of the famous Bretagne seafood! Yummy!

Upon leaving Ouessant, we will most likely track towards St Mary’s on the Isles of Scilly, where we will utilise the short and reportedly bumpy RWY’s in order to revel in the natural beauties which surround the islands. They are some of the most beautiful areas around the UK and for me, this will be one of the highlights of the trip. Due to the lack of fuel on offer at St Mary’s, we will be forced to route via either Perranporth in Cornwall or more likely to Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire for a splash n’ dash of the old AVGAS, before continuing up towards Caernarfon on the North Welsh coast. This is one of my favourite airfields, due to the combination of its rugged nature on the tip of a spit of land, which is almost fully surrounded when the tide is fully in, and the beautiful approaches, which bring you in over the Irish Sea. The trip will be completed by a short, (in comparison to the preceding flights!) leg back across Northern Wales, with either a zone transit through Hawarden and a shoot up the Low Level Corridor to Barton, or routing up and around Liverpool airspace via Formby and Wigan back towards Barton, the resting place of VA.

Although we have planned the journey for seven days, we do have a few buffer days in case the weather decides to turn nasty and force us to take cover from its ferocious nature. If we are not forced to utilise these days, then who knows, the world is our oyster… well admittedly yes, but much more likely to happen is a day trip Navigation exercise to the Lake District or the Isle of Man! All in all, this should be the most enthralling, entertaining, yet challenging journeys of my flying career. But, it is one, which I am looking forwards to with an open mind and bags of bottomless enthusiasm! Bring on August!