Routed:
Leg 1 EGBJ - BNE - LAM - DVR – BNE - VIMY - LFQQ
Leg 2 LFQQ – CTL – TRO – LFSD
Poor weather forecast for most of the latter part of the week and the weekend. There might be a chance to run for it between fronts on the Friday (which is when we planned to go anyway). Looked out on Friday morning and looked bad – low clouds and high winds. Decided to go to the airport anyway and see how it panned out.
Two French pilots at Gloucester had just flown in from Paris and said it wasn’t good and exchanged worried glances when Dan told them we were going VFR – even the lady who took out flight plan thought we were nuts! Decided to at least get airborne and if we had to divert or return, we could do that. In the event, we got to 2000’ with a helpful and occasionally bumpy howling tailwind which gave us an airspeed of 125 kts and a groundspeed of 172 kts!
Barrelling along the low level north London ‘corridor’ and so far so good, still 2000’ and bumpy, let’s have a sniff at the channel. That looked OK and even got to 3000’ coasting out until forced down at mid-channel to 1200’ to stay VMC. I was sure I heard a fellow forumite speaking to Lille Info as it was a ‘N’ registered aircraft out of Elstree – it turned out later that this was Ben – at least someone else has made it.
Better over the French coast, but down again to 1200’ near Vimy Ridge. Canadian monument covered in scaffold and plastic to headed for Lille and managed to get back to 2000’. I was glad I chose Lille as it has two runways and was given 20 with wind as 220 25G37. Very nice landing with one stage of flaps and parked up. It didn’t occur to me how strong the wind was until Dan tried to open the door and couldn’t – we were parked into wind and the force was quite something!
We went through the most ludicrous customs / arrivals and departures process I have yet seen, even the lady who escorted us through the process said it was mad and had driven much of the GA traffic away. Got refuelled and away again on runway 20 with the wind as 220 25G42 – I was at 800’ by the time I crossed the end of the runway!
We shower dodged all the way to Dijon at 3000’ odd, worse in the north. Called Dijon approach and cleared to land direct onto my choice or runways. I opted for 20 but left the approach descent far too late and ‘stuka’d’ the initial descent for a long final approach to land. Wind a reasonable 240 / 12. Dijon were amazingly helpful. They are part civilian and part military, of course the military had packed up by the time we got there. We were marshalled to the pumps, filled up very quickly and pulled to parking – we could sort the paperwork out in the morning (nothing to do I suppose with the airfield staff wanting to knock-off early?). The Brietling L39 Albatross display aircraft were in one of the hangars, but this was locked before I could get photos.
A particularly lovely girl ordered us a taxi and asked us to follow her (we decided she was a Stargate SG1) – of course!!!!
We stayed in the City Loft hotel in the centre of Dijon. I called one of the forumites to say we had gotten out of the UK and were on our way only to be told that he and many others had called it off. I was surprised as the weather wasn’t as bad as it seemed, but I guess every pilots has to make their own decisions based on their comfort levels.
By now we were both starving having missed lunch, so we showered and changed and hit a bar for four beers each in rapid succession. We then went to a posh restaurant feeling very under-dressed and had an excellent meal with a nice bottle of the local stuff. Followed by more beers and a sleep of the righteous.
Next day was simply sightseeing for the two of us. We had opted to do the first bit by ourselves a bit further south than Troyes where the rest were meant to be meeting.
Well, we were out of blighty and a fair way south – we knew Saturday was forecast to be poor with a front going through and so it proved to be – with light rain all morning, but starting to break-up by mid-afternoon. Our hopes were high for Sunday and the flight down the Rhone valley and across the lower Alps to Cannes.
