Well what a coincidence I thought! I had just been mulling around my ‘big trip’ for next year and deciding on a Nordic trip, including trips from Copenhagen to Gothenburg and Gothenburg to Oslo!
So in the spirit of friendship and the prospect of picking a locals brains, I offered this chap a ride around my local area if he could find his way to Gloucester. Well bless him, Peter PM’d me and said he could fly up on Sunday 3rd July, weather permitting.
Peter arrived on a very nice day with at least 3500’ ceiling and scattered puffy cumulus in a rental and very beige Cessna 172. I knew it had to be him from the colour (which he did warn me about) and from his hesitation at taxi around to the parking spaces (the toughest part of a flight to a new airfield for me is always where to go once you get there, how to get fuel etc.!).
We had a pleasant chat sitting at the outside tables at the Aviator café and Peter pointed out on my maps the typical route I should follow, the reporting points, restricted areas, likely joins and best of all, where I would probably have to taxi and park! He made the useful observation that AVGAS is virtually tax free in Sweden (but heavily taxed in Norway and Denmark) so I should make a point of stopping in Sweden going both ways and filling up.
Chat over, I took Peter up in my TB10. I think he found it very tidy indeed compared to the ‘seen better days’ club hacks he normally flew.
Peter finds the UK quite different from flying in his native Sweden. In Sweden, they have lots of lake as reference points (looks like too many to me) and not many towns so the town you are looking for is likely to be the one you see – in the UK of course, especially England, there are towns and villages all over the place and it is easy to talk yourself into confusing Broadway with Evesham with Stratford if you are of a mind!
Flew the local ‘racecourse route’ from Gloucester to Chepstow (taking in the Severn bridges), then up the Wye valley to Hereford, across to Ledbury and around the Malverns then back to Gloucester. Lovely day and great visibility. Pointed out all of the local sights and landmarks and as I now know the area so well from the sky, didn’t need to refer to my map.
On requesting rejoin at Gloucester was told to ‘standby – dealing with priority traffic’. An unusual comment so I stayed schtum! I heard nothing on the normal frequency until they called me back and advised that runway 22 was no longer in use (!) and I was cleared for a standard overhead join for 27 etc. This gave me the opportunity to turn final over GCHQ and point it out to Peter – he thought it was a sports centre at first!
On landing and taxi back, saw the smallest single engine tail-dragger I have ever seen on 22 with the fire crew towing it away – apparently this was on its way from Kemble to ‘ooop north’ when he called for a priority landing with what turned out to be vapour-lock – the engine stopped on the landing roll! All in all, I heard that Gloucester had an exciting time of it on Sunday!
Peter seemed to have enjoyed himself and offered a return of the favour next year when I get to Gothenburg. Careful Peter, I will take you up on that.
All in all, a good excuse to get up for a local bimble and talk to someone about flying. I do find it really useful talking to locals about trips you are planning, it all helps to make the trip so much easier and more enjoyable – to rephrase an old army adage:
Plan and prepare hard – fly easy!
No comments:
Post a Comment