After getting everything in order and making a ferry booking for Tuesday evening, I left the house where I’d been staying for nearly two weeks to pick up Toddie, my dog. My step son had been looking after him since I left to take my furniture and belongings to France and I’d also arranged for my son to be there as it could be several months before I see either of them again. I then drove down to Dorset to see my mother who lives there with my sister and brother-in-law, and after sleeping on the floor on the Monday night and spending the following day with my mother, Toddie and I left to catch the ferry late on Tuesday afternoon. So we left England for our new home in France on 15th May 2012.
I was determined to avoid the tiredness problems that I’d experienced before, the more so as I was now driving a faster vehicle anyway and time was not therefore an issue. So my plan was to drive for two or three hours to get away from northern France and then pull up for the night in a rest area. So that’s what we did, and what a strange experience this led to. The rest areas have trucks parked up in them with their drivers resting at all times of the day and at night, of course, almost all of them are packed, as was the one we stopped at. In the early hours I was suddenly awoken by a truck horn blaring out and a lot of powerful lights being switched on. I looked out of my car to see two or three guys in the lorry park with balaclava masks on who had been stealing diesel fuel by siphoning it out of the tanks of the parked trucks and in doing so had disturbed one of the drivers. They had a small white van and while the others ran to jump into it, one of the thieves made an intimidating gesture at the driver whose truck he was in front of. But he’d totally underestimated who he was dealing with. The driver promptly jumped out with a baseball bat and my gosh, you should have seen that villain run! He only just made it to his van and for a while the driver sprinted after it waving his baseball bat in the air. Luckily for the thieves, they made it to the exit before he caught up with them. If not, I think there may have been a case of a few busted heads that night
But that wasn’t the end of it. It seems that all of those long-distance truck drivers who sleep in their cabs take their trousers off before retiring. Well, by this time the first driver had been joined by about 10 others and all to a man totally trouserless. What a sight as they all discussed what had happened and spent the next half an hour or so checking their fuel tanks – still with no trousers on. It’s something that’ll stick in my mind for a very long time to come, let me tell you
Toddie and I arrived here in Plazac last Wednesday afternoon but it certainly isn’t plain sailing just yet. We stayed in the new house without services of any kind after picking up the keys and arranging with the agent’s assistance (thank you, Sandrine…) to have electricity, water, phone and internet connected. I don’t know when the last two will go on but I was told that water would be reconnected on the following Friday and electricity on Monday, tomorrow. However, as this is France, the water guys didn’t arrive as promised so I still don’t have any water and do not know when they might arrive to switch it on even, as the appointment was made by the estate agent and they weren’t open on Saturday (I went and checked just to make sure they weren’t there and just not answering their phone )
But all is not lost – both of my closest neighbours are great. To the rear I have a middle-aged couple from Bordeaux who will be here only until the end of today as theirs is a holiday home. The grass has grown so much that the poor chap has spent the whole of his time since I’ve been here mowing it – with just a few stops now and again for the odd glass of wine I think. I find his wife quite easy to understand and hold a conversation with but less so him for some reason. His accent I find a tad difficult at present – unless it’s the vin rouge of course (his or mine I do not know…) – but I think it will all become easier in time. The neighbours to my left are a brilliant bunch of young French people – guys and girls, about 10 or possibly more I think as they have a house-full plus several tents in the garden – who I think are musicians and have a contract in the area (as I understood it) for 1 year from September. They have been a life saver – after being desperate for water and even washing in bottled stuff from the supermarket, I can now get all I need from them from an outside tap. And they’ve also given me the code for their wi-fi which I can receive either from outside or my bedroom windows. They are a lovely bunch of youngsters, so very friendly and I’m very lucky for them to give me their help without question as they have done, so typical of the majority of the French people, I’ve always found.
I’ve got a generator that I brought from England (fortunately) that I use to run a light, charge my laptop and run a fan heater downstairs from time to time, like now, as it’s a bit chilly and stormy, will remain so until about next Tuesday or Wednesday and the house hasn’t had a chance to warm up inside just yet. I can’t really do anything except get by until I get water and electricity as the house needs cleaning throughout very badly. I can’t use the toilet as it’s full of spiders etc and needs a lot of water down it to clean it out. I’ll say no more except I now know what it was like for the pioneers who opened up the wild west Lucky I have a sense of humour – and a lot of bushes eh.
But there have been compensations, of course. Alan, an old friend of mine of 81 suffered a stroke a few months ago. I dropped in on him to see how he was and say, ‘Au revoir’, on the Saturday before I left England. He made me the kind gift of a litre of J & B Rare Scotch Whisky and I promised him that on my first night in Plazac I’d toast my arrival and his future health in it. So that’s what I did and much I enjoyed it too. Here’s to you and Margaret, Alan, and may things soon get better for both of you.
I’ve got the local supermarket run sorted out now and before I’d got my own out of ‘the cave’ where I’d put it, Bob helped me out with a single burner stove which has been a useful addition. Talking about compensations and the supermarket, a couple of evenings ago, I bought a bottle of Bordeaux there, Chateau Du Bosc 2010 for just €2.95, that turned out to be really excellent. Last night I thought I’d risk it and go for a bog standard bottle of Appellation Bordeaux Controlee ‘plonk’ for €1.55 and had some with my lunch today of baguette, saucisson de porc fumee and pate de campagne. And do you know what, it was pretty good They have always said that the French keep the best of their wines for themselves and export the rest and I think there could be some truth in that.
Anyway, that’s it for now. I don’t expect to see much of Bob for a while unfortunately as he has some other priorities to occupy him, but I’m very self-sufficient and will get by as I’ve done so far since I arrived. My next purchase early next week will be a heavy duty motorized grass cutter and brush clearer so I can get cracking outside. The greenery is way above the window sills – I’ll post some pics soon so you can see what I mean. In the meantime I shall be exhorting the weather gods to do something about the cold and rain that I’ve been on the receiving end of almost non-stop since arriving here. The car thermometer went up to 26 degrees on one day but that now seems like a distant memory. I just want it to get back up there before I start on the job of cleaning the house as it will take a lot of water, all of which will then need to dry out again. What’s the opposite of a rain dance?
My move to France has taken so long that when I turned up at the last couple of Medway club meetings, people did a double-take and said, ‘You still here?’ And it happened again today when I went into Stoke with Peter for a final flight (for a few months at least anyway…) in the X’air. But this time it was for real and I was sad to think that I won’t be seeing the old gang again, possibly for quite a while. I’ll miss the customary jokes, banter, insults and leg-pulling and all the little things that make you feel that you’re part of a club. So until the next time, thanks to Chris and Karen, Slip and Claire, Tony and Rosemary, Sue and Steve, Pam, Blow Job, John, Andrew, Paul and Sarah, Kirk, Roger and Roger, Popey, Gary, young Blair and all the other members whose names I’ve missed or forgotten to include. It was great knowing you all and I hope I get the chance to see you all again some time before too long. Until then keep making sure that you fly safe
Things have become pretty fraught over recent weeks due to the intransigence of the seller of my new house in Plazac and their refusal to complete the sale in a timely manner. Since returning from France over a week ago I have been dependent on the generosity of a friend who has allowed me to ‘camp’ inside a house that they own on more or less an open-ended basis until I am able to make the final move to France. I’ve also not seen Toddie my dog since I left my old house in the truck on April 26th as I could not have him with me and didn’t want to upset him by letting him see me and then having to leave him again. So one way and another the past couple of weeks have not been any kind of a picnic
Well, at last after applying increasing pressure on the estate agent in France, who had assured me that such problems would not arise and then seemed incapable of effectively dealing with them when they did, early this evening I received the telephone call from him that I wanted to hear. This was that so long as I took out comprehensive buildings insurance at a cost of €30/month, I could now move into the property whenever I wanted to. So now I can make plans to tie everything up here in the UK and I think that I’ll then be able to get down to Plazac probably by Wednesday next week. One of the reasons for there being a small delay is because I want to see my mum before I go. She’s 93 this month and it could be a few months before I see her again, so I must make the trip down to Dorset, where she’s living with my sister, before I go.
But at least I can now see a light at the end of this particular tunnel, which quite honestly, could not have come too soon
Well, I’ve been back in the UK since last Monday night during which I ended up sleeping in the cab of a truck, but more about that in a moment. The run-up to my house move on 26th April was a bit traumatic and incredibly tiring. For weeks beforehand I’d been de-cluttering and disposing of unwanted stuff by selling what I could on eBay, giving items away on Freecycle.org and, as a last resort, throwing stuff away at the local tip. Even then, as the moving day loomed on which I had to quit my old house, of course, there still seemed so much to pack or get rid of.
I’d reserved a 7.5 ton self-drive truck with a tail-lift for a week to get all the stuff I wanted to take with me down to Plazac and decided beforehand that I’d pick it up and load it the day before the move so as to relieve some of the pressure on me. What I didn’t account for was that despite the best laid plans, I’d be driving around the countryside for some of that time getting paperwork signed by my ex-wife and delivered to my solicitor in time to get the completion through and that I’d still as a result end up under tremendous time pressure.
I was incredibly grateful to receive the help of my mate Ken on the Wednesday who took me over to pick up the truck and then spent the whole of the day right up until the early evening helping me pack boxes and load them and the large, heavy items of furniture and kitchen appliances I was taking with me, into it for the journey south. I could never have done it by myself and I can’t thank him enough for all he did. I totally underestimated the number of boxes that I needed. I had previously got 17 large, strong boxes off eBay and thought they would be enough. In fact I had to get another 10 locally, that were even larger, together with 2 more rolls of bubble-wrap and ended up using all of them too! And all the time while we ferried stuff from house to truck it rained and rained
On the Thursday I had the help of my son Brad. By that time I was beginning to flag and Brad did me the enormous favour of blindly throwing stuff away into ‘rubbish’ without showing it to me or worrying very much what it was! I needed that by then, actually. Colin the ‘white van man’ who took away the rubbish probably thought he’d struck treasure trove with a lot of the stuff he took away – more than 2 Transit vans-full – but I don’t begrudge him that in any way as he did it all for me as a favour and did me a great service as a result.
Late on Thursday afternoon Ashley, my buyer, and I ended up with our respective solicitors on hands-free on our mobile phones talking to each other to agree what they needed to get the completion done that day and I’m glad to say that they succeeded. I don’t think it would have happened though if we hadn’t resorted to forcing them to talk directly in the way that we did
Come the Thursday afternoon and I still hadn’t booked a Channel crossing for the truck because of all the uncertainty. Because of the size and weight of the vehicle, I had to go out and back as a freight booking which meant going via Norfolk Line, which is now part of DFDS. I did the booking on my laptop and waited for the confirmation before finally packing my printer. It didn’t come and luckily I decided to phone DFDS to find out what was going on. They had no record of the booking but luckily we managed to sort it out and finally I was able to do my print out.
I’d hoped to get away by about 4pm on Thursday for a 10.45pm booking but it wasn’t to be just because of the sheer volume of stuff that I still needed to clear out. Brad worked tirelessly and I eventually managed to get away just after 10.00pm and then only because Ashley came round and kicked me out in the nicest possible way saying that he would get rid of the rubbish that I’d be leaving behind and that I didn’t have to bother. So thanks for that, Ashley.
I was much too late for my ferry booking of course, and was concerned that when I got to Dover, DFDS might hold me back for ages until they could get me on another one. I needn’t have worried though, because their service was impeccable on both the outgoing and the return crossings, the latter of which I also had to get reorganised at short notice, as I’ll explain later. I was loaded onto the 2.30am Dover to Calais ferry and drove out of the port the other side in the pitch dark at something like 5.30am local time. That was when I made my first, and I’m glad to say, only major cock up
I already had the route programmed into my sat nav from my previous trip down to Plazac so off I went. Unfortunately I’d failed to notice that for some reason the device had dropped its ‘recalculate automatically when off route’ setting and I put down the absence of the lady’s otherwise helpful advice to the fact that I was on the right route. I got a couple of indications that maybe things were not quite as they should have been. The first was that the ‘arrival time at destination’ shown on my sat nav was constantly increasing and this did slightly alarm me, but I thought that this might be down to it being so early in the journey. However, shortly after when the dawn began to come up, it was pretty obvious that the increasing brightness was far too much on my nose! And sure enough, it was, as then I began to see road signs indicating that Belgium was just down the road!
Now I hear you say, how can you possibly be so daft as to end up going totally the wrong way out of Calais, and let me tell you that it’s very easy at that time of the day, in pitch darkness, driving a large, unfamiliar diesel truck! I had been following the signs west towards Dunkirk but what I’d then done was miss a clover leaf at a road junction. And once you’ve done something like that, you don’t get many chances to rectify the mistake as there aren’t that many places where you can leave the road you’re on and turn round. But I did eventually and fortunately not a lot of harm was done as the actual mileage involved was not that great. And once I’d checked and reset the sat nav, off I went again. But this time, instead of taking me on my preferred route to the west, avoiding Paris, because of where I was starting from, I had no choice but to follow where my sat nav led me, south around the eastern side of Paris on the dreaded Peripherique
The Peripherique at rush hour in the rain in a very large diesel truck is not the most attractive proposition, but it didn’t turn out to be too bad. Amazingly, apart from a small minority who seemed to have some kind of death wish and thought that it was quite OK to cut into the stopping distance in front of a very large truck at short notice, most drivers afforded me and the other much larger trucks that I found myself amongst, the respect they deserved. The constant stop-start was a little bit tedious but after a while I emerged on the south of the city and was able to continue my journey south.
Diesel fuel is much cheaper in France than in the UK but even so, the cost when I came to fill up further south was a shock to the credit card. And as I’d decided to keep to the autoroutes to save time, the additional peage costs also soon began to add up. But no matter, driving myself was still considerably cheaper than doing the move any other way and I just had to swallow whatever of such costs were thrown at me. And there were quite a few, let me tell you. I seemed to be constantly stopping and jumping out of my cab to run around to the left of the vehicle and stuff my card into yet another peage machine for the next bit of my journey south
Apart from stopping for fuel and to grab the odd snack, I drove constantly all day. The truck had a speedometer marked in km/hr and was governed like all the others in France to a speed of 90. This meant that you couldn’t build up speed on a down-grade so you could whizz up the other side. Instead, because of the weight on board, I was constantly changing down whenever I got to even the slightest up-hill stretch and was even being overtaken by some of the many giant trucks with trailers that had the power to pass me, sometimes at a mere snail’s pace that kept them alongside me for a minute or more! I felt like a real trucker at the end of it
The day began to catch up with me, though, some distance south of the city of Limoges. By then my eyes were feeling very heavy and although I’d been on the mobile and given Bob an ETA, after I’d nodded off at the wheel three times, just for a moment each time mind, I knew it was time to stop for a break. I pulled into one of the many rest areas that you find every few kilometres along the major roads in France, arranged my sleeping bag under my back to give me a little bit of something to lie on and fell asleep within seconds.
I woke up after about an hour to the sound of my sat nav lady announcing that she was ‘recalculating route’ and after a brief trip to the loo, hit the road once more. The short break had done wonders for me and it didn’t seem that long before I was calling Bob up at Montignac to tell him when I’d be arriving at the house. We met up and all that was left for me to do that Friday was to park up ready to unload the next day. Unfortunately, because of my tiredness and carelessness, I managed to touch the guttering when reversing the truck into position in front of the house, but luckily the damage was not that great and will be easily fixed when I get in for good.
Saturday 28th April was a very productive day, despite it being cool, dull and damp, unseasonably so for the Dordogne at this time of the year. I had to sign some final papers at the estate agent’s in Montignac and open a French bank account. Then we managed to get in to see a new notaire who will hopefully be able to get behind the seller’s existing one, who is useless quite frankly and a total disaster, to push the purchase forward so I can get into the house as soon as possible. Having done that, Bob and Jude then gave me a hand to unload my stuff off the truck into the house which, as it had taken two days to load up, surprisingly only took a few hours to get off. And that was after Jude had very kindly given the inside of the house a clean-through as well, using stuff Bob and I had had bought at the local Leclerc supermarket a bit earlier.
In my plans, I’d allowed a couple of days for this so that left Sunday 29th April free. Bob and I went up to the piste so I could check MYRO, which was fine despite the large amount of rain that had fallen in recent days. Its wheels were invisible, though, because of the length of the grass and after strimming around MYRO quite a bit, Bob gave me a go to finish off. I’ve not used a petrol strimmer before and I now know that I’ll have to get one to clear the grass and scrub in my garden when I move in.
My original plan was to start the drive home on Tuesday 1st May but it seemed pointless to delay when I’d done everything I’d needed to. So I decided to leave on the Monday and return the truck on the Tuesday morning rather than on the Wednesday that the hire company had said would be OK. This time I did head around to the west of Paris, although funnily enough on a different route to the one I’d taken before, and having learnt the lessons from the outward journey, this time I stopped and rested three times when I felt tiredness overtaking me. DFDS were totally un-fazed when I arrived at Calais a day early! In fact, they said that as the departing ferry had been delayed, if I hurried I’d be able to get straight on, which I did despite having my empty truck searched by the French security! I was directed straight up the ramp and while I waited for directions on where to park by the loading crew, was told just to cut my engine where I was. So I did and the ferry door was closed behind me, and mine was the last vehicle to board.
The empty truck was searched again by the UK Border people but pretty soon I was on the M2 heading towards home, but this time I had no home to go to! So I found somewhere to park up, just like all the other truckers, made myself comfortable as best I could and fell asleep in the cab with the constant rain drumming on the roof. And surprisingly, I managed about 5 hours sleep, which felt wonderful afterwards!
I’m now ‘camping out’ in an empty house owned by a friend with little by way of heating and hot water but that’ll do me fine until I can leave for France for good in, hopefully, a few days time. I’m putting pressure on the estate agent and pushing to get access to my new house in Plazac even if between them the notaires haven’t managed to complete the Acte de Vente, by paying the full amount due for the purchase and the legal fees, into my notaire’s account. I’ve been assured that it will be possible, but typically they will not say by when. My confidence in the French system has, to say the least, been somewhat dented by these experiences. I’ll let you know what happens next – when it happens
I’m tired now with all the packing and clearing the house ready for the move. I’ve now got a completion date for my house sale of next Thursday 26th April and quite a few things are still up in the air. So it’s all beginning to weigh a little bit.
It’s at times like this that I need to remind myself of what it’s all about and sometimes I take another look at THE VIDEO I did on the day in February when I viewed the house in France and signed the Compromis de Vente. I soon then manage to convince myself that it’ll all be worth it in the end.
When I flew MYRO down over Easter, although I couldn’t go inside, Bob kindly drove me across to view the house again. When I first saw it, it was January and it was cold and bare looking. The next time was in February when I shot the video, and it was even colder and everything was under a blanket of snow. But now it was Spring-time and everything was looking green, fresh and inviting. Here are some of the pics I shot while I was there.
As soon as I saw the place again I knew that I still loved it and I told Bob that I had absolutely no second thoughts whatsoever. So I know that all this hard work clearing things out and de-cluttering my life really will be worth it in the long run and now I just can’t wait to get down there and start my new life.
These are some of the shots taken by Bob’s wife Jude showing MYRO’s arrival at Bob’s airfield on Easter Saturday afternoon. They start with my first go-around from the north when I was getting a feel for the approach and then show the landing, taxying in, the pilot’s relief at being back on the ground after over 8 hours of flying from the UK and finally, chewing the fat with the friends who came to meet me.
Thank you, Jude, for taking these lovely pics and letting me have them
The weather reports from Bob in the Plazac area indicated that although the weather was slowly improving, there was still no point in taking off for the final leg because the cloud base at the other end would still be too low on arrival and there would also still be a chance of a few showers. Dave wanted to take Dave for a flight even though instruction wouldn’t be possible because of the local conditions and when they went off to DI the new white Quik, I got all my things together and packed, ready to stow in MYRO. I then thought I’d take a stroll down the track from the house to the piste and watch them take off. I was accompanied by one of the cats who initially ran off when I approached her but then decided to come and find me when she realised that I was walking off and ignoring her. Do you wonder how I know it was a ’she’?
After Dave and Dave had taken off and gone haring off towards the west, the cat and I returned together back along the track to the house in warm sunshine with bushes on either side of me. All of a sudden there was gust of wind that sent a cloud of white blossom flying all around me and it made me realise that after my move, that is what I would have to look forward to for the rest of my time there in France. I have to say that it was a very good feeling!
While the Daves were away I busied myself untying MYRO and sorting my kit out and when they returned it was time to refill MYRO’s tanks. Dave asked me how much fuel I needed and I had a little think. There was still some fuel in the tanks and a bit left over in a jerry from Le Gault. I thought it prudent to allow not only for the planned flight down to Plazac but also for the slight, albeit unlikely, possibility of having to return to Wanafly if the weather at the other end turned unexpectedly sour again. I therefore decided that I ought to uplift another 40 litres of fuel.
Now, because my fuel plan had assumed that I’d only need to uplift 40 litres of fuel in total, I’d only brought 800ml of oil with me, which I’d used up at Le Gault. This was from oil that I’d bought in bulk from Lubetech many months before and which had served me so well so far. I told Dave this and was worried that because he only had 4-strokes at Wanafly, there we were on Easter Saturday and I had to get my hands on 800ml of 2-stroke oil. Dave said not to worry because he was sure he’d have some suitable oil somewhere and sure enough, he did. When he dipped into his cupboard out came….. an old opened bottle containing 850ml of Shell VSX! I knew immediately, of course, that this would be perfect for my Rotax engine
We did the usual fuel-oil mixing and when we’d finished and Dave was taking his jerries back to his hangar, with Dave’s help (no not that Dave, the other one….), I succeeded in overfilling the tanks until they just overflowed. But there was no harm done – I have to admit to having done it before when I only had the single tank – and MYRO was ready to go. There was now just time to enjoy yet another one of Mandy’s lovely meals while the weather at the other end finished clearing, this time a gorgeous fresh salad with cold meats and cheese but with only fizzy water for me while the others enjoyed beer or wine as there would be no further flying for them that day. Then after checking with Bob that all was beginning to look good enough down south, it was time to go.
Here’s a pic of the final leg of the flight from Wanafly to Plazac.
I was glad to get away but sorry to leave such good new friends behind and we said our ‘au revoirs’ by radio as I departed. As the pic above shows, Limoges Bellegarde airport, which Ryanair and Flybe both use, is just south of Wanafly and although I would be flying through their Class E airspace, I had to do a dog leg to remain clear of their Class D. I then only had to make one more course change to arrive at my final destination. But between me and it there were several large areas of high ground that I had to climb over. There was still no proper horizon and the rising ground only became visible from a fairly short distance away as it gradually appeared from the murk. And it also became quite hard work as the lift and sink associated with the terrain and scattered broken cloud took their toll. As I mentioned earlier, at times as I was approaching the rising ground, I was revving the little 503 at climb RPM (6100rpm) and ‘climbing’ at the usual 45 mph climb speed only to see the VSI still showing 3/400 fpm down! This wasn’t as bad as it sounds though, because I gave myself as much height to play with as the cloud base allowed, and before things got too close for comfort there was always then an area of lift that sent me zipping back up to 1800ft or more before it all started all over again. But it did take its toll on MYRO’s fuel burn and I was glad that I’d decided to take on the extra fuel.
And all was not sweetness and light in the vis department either. As the leg progressed and I began to catch up with the back end of the slowly departing weather front, I began to notice clumps of scud passing below me. As the cloud thickened there were more and more patches of cloud with their bases hanging down below the height I wanted to fly at. So I had no choice but to descend and as I began to do so it became apparent that the vis was rapidly drawing in again as well. Luckily by that time I’d passed the last area of high ground but still, as I approached my final destination, between Thiviers and Excideuil it came down to what I estimate was a maximum of 3000 metres and probably even a bit less for a while. But I knew from Bob’s earlier messages that this would only be temporary and it proved to be so.
As I saw the A89 autoroute and the town of Thenon appear on my satnav, not only was I clear of the poor vis but I also knew that I was almost home. This was an area that I’d already driven around quite a bit and got to know and it’s one that I’ll get to know even better over the years when my life in Plazac has got underway. Shortly afterwards when I was about 7 or so miles out, I called up on the radio and Bob’s voice came back to me. I spotted the field shortly after, which looked terribly short from where I was, and did a wide circuit to land from what I thought would be the preferred direction from the point of view of wind direction. However, I’d forgotten that there are wires at that end and it would also have been down-hill, so a go-around was called for. I then did a full circuit of the field to approach from the other direction.
While Dave (no, the other Dave from Calton Moor) and I had been talking at Wanafly, I’d said that whenever I went into a new airfield that I was unfamiliar with for the first time, I always made sure I remained high until I was sure I’d got the approach sussed even if it meant going around a couple of times. And that’s exactly what I did. In the video that Bob shot of my arrival, it looks as though I was doing a fly-by from each direction, but in fact they were go-arounds, not fly-byes. I decided to land on my second approach from the north but I could really have done with going around again because I was still a bit too high. As a result, I landed a bit too long and ended up braking like mad because I was approaching the road with the electricity poles and lines at the other end, and to be sure, I took MYRO off into the long grass to the left of the runway to bring it to a halt. I actually ended up stopping well short of the runway end but I still think it was the right thing to do in view of the weight I was carrying on board.
Bob and Jude and a couple of other friends, Regis and Wim, who Bob had already introduced me to several months previously were there to greet me and I was pleased to see them there too. We had a chat about how things had gone but there will be plenty of time for that in times to come and they helped me to unload MYRO and get it covered up as best I could with the covers I had brought with me. I then also tied MYRO down using the three concrete-filled tyres that Bob had made for me because to the west there were some large rain bearing clouds brewing and I would have hated for a little local storm to have brewed up and for MYRO to have been damaged by winds after coming all that way. Here’s the final pic showing MYRO tied down in its new home and as you can see, the sky was still quite angry.
I was glad to have arrived after all my experiences over the two days, although I would never have missed them for anything. Someone asked me a while back if I was going to trailer MYRO down and I said that the thought had never occurred to me. I said to my friends after the flight down, that MYRO would never be going back to England, not with me flying it anyway, but that’s not true. If I had to for any reason I would, but not that I expect to have to though. And I’d say to anyone thinking about venturing abroad from the UK for the first time, if you know that you’re ready for it, give a flight across the Channel into France a try. It’s not complicated or hard and is certainly well within the capabilities of the average microlight pilot, whether ‘multiaxes’ or ‘pendulaire’. If an old fart like me can do it in MYRO, when you’ve got enough experience under your belt you can certainly do it in your Quiks, Quantums and C42s. All you need to do is make sure you plan it properly and that you stay safe and within your and the aircraft’s limits. Then you can’t go wrong
It had taken me longer than I thought it would to get away from Abbeville after sorting out the formalities and topping up MYRO’s tanks from my jerries. I’d had to unstrap everything that I’d packed on the right hand seat to get at them and then put it all back again when I’d finished. Initially I had poured fuel into the right hand tank and then waited for it to transfer into the second but when I had realised that this was going to take far too long, I had removed the cap from the second tank and poured fuel straight in while leaning in through the cabin door. That had done the trick and I was to repeat this each time I refuelled afterwards.
So as I was already running behind schedule, I needed to turn things around as fast as I could here at Le Gault. But as someone who I didn’t know had, after a phone call completely out of the blue from me, been kind enough to agree to get me some fuel and had, if they were still here at the strip, probably been hanging around waiting for me for something like three hours because of my delays, I couldn’t just grab the fuel and scoot off. I could see a silver VW Golf parked next to the hut at the southern end of the piste so someone was still there, thank goodness, and sure enough, after I’d landed in a bit of a skittish cross wind, as I back-tracked towards the hut a guy emerged wearing a beard and a broad smile. After I’d shut MYRO down and got out, we shook hands and he said he was amazed that I’d got in from up north at all in that vis. He didn’t speak much English but we managed OK with my French and we went into the hut and he made us a cup of coffee each (a small glass actually!) by boiling water in a small saucepan. It seems that small farm-type microlight strips are similar wherever they are!
We talked about the weather and he complained that he’d had no students because of it and had even lost a bit of aerial photographic business because of the murk. By now there was a bit of a blustery north-easterly wind blowing and the sky was blue with broken cloud when you looked straight up, but there was still a lot of horizontal haze over the surface of the land. We talked about where I was heading for and not surprisingly, as he was about 3 hours to the north, he wasn’t very familiar with the area. The time then came to make a move and we went into his small but very tidy dome-type hangar, that was by no means full but contained four or five fully rigged Tanarg and other Air Creation ‘pendulaires’. I had ended our previous phone conversation by only asking him to get me 20 litres of 95 octane fuel but in fact he had got 45, and after checking my tanks, I decided that I might as well take 40 and possibly not uplift any from Wanafly if my fuel plan worked out. In fact it didn’t, but I’ll come to that later on. I got out the oil that I’d brought with me, one of my jerries to do my fuel-oil mix in and my funnel to do the fuel transfer, and pretty soon we’d got MYRO tanked up again.
So then came the time for me to settle up and my friend produced a petrol receipt from which he’d manually deducted the cost of the 5 litres I hadn’t taken and which came to just over €66. I pulled €80 in notes out of my wallet which I gratefully offered to him for the fuel and the cost he’d incurred helping me out. He was visibly offended that I had offered him more than the amount he’d calculated. I then reduced it to €70 and insisted he took it to cover his own fuel expenses for driving to the garage and back to get me the fuel and he even turned that down until it was my turn to really insist that he did! This is absolutely typical in my experience of practically all of the French people that I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with – they couldn’t be more kind and generous and it’s one of the reasons why I’m going to be happy living among them.
So then we shook hands and I got into MYRO, fired up and was away. I did an immediate low climbing turn to the left and as I passed the hut, we waved to each other and I was gone. I still don’t know what his name was and I wonder if we’ll ever meet again?
As the vis had improved a bit, even though it was now a little more bumpy, the flight to Wanafly was pretty uneventful. I saw a couple of other aircraft flying close to one or two of the airfields shown close to my track on my satnav but that was about it. After leaving Le Gault I had to do a dog leg through a gap between the airfields at Chateaudun and Orleans Bricy to remain clear of their airspace and then I had a long straight leg down to the west of a small town called Le Blanc. Here’s a pic showing this leg of my route.
Le Blanc is a small town to the north of Wanafly. It has an airfield on its south-east side and I had therefore decided to skirt round to the west so I could remain clear of its area. As I flew past I watched a light aircraft flying in there and I found out later that Dave Lord takes students there for cross countries. After Le Blanc, I turned onto more or less a due southerly heading and was quite soon looking out for Wanafly’s runway. As before, I’d been there in both Google Earth and Google Street View (both brilliant tools!) so knew exactly what to expect, and when I spotted what looked like a runway on the right heading (12/30) just to the left of my track but just a bit ahead of my estimated arrival time, I knew it wasn’t the right place because of the positions and layout of its buildings. However, a few moments later, there was Wanafly slap bang dead on my nose. I called up on the frequency that Dave at Wanafly uses (123.55) as we’d agreed and he came back to me from a hand-held. It was a bit too broken for me to get the complete message but I knew anyway that I had to land on 12 even though there was a cross wind and even a slight tail wind component. So I descended overhead, did a fairly tight circuit avoiding neighbouring buildings and houses and landed on the runway, which is slightly up-hill in that direction. After back-tracking and taxying round to where Dave and a student from Calton Moor who was also named Dave were standing, I cut MYRO’s engine after a flight of about 2 hours 40 minutes (as I recall) from Le Gault and a total of 6 hours 40 minutes for the day flying from Stoke to Wanafly.
I then had the pleasure of enjoying the most incredible hospitality imaginable that Dave and Mandy provide at Wanafly for their students and holiday visitors. I found them to be such lovely people and just by being there, you automatically become a member of their family – along with their two big friendly dogs, the cats, the pigs and the chickens. Dave had told me beforehand that there might only be a bed in a caravan available for me but in the event I was taken up to a beautifully decorated bedroom with a lovely high ceiling and traditional exposed beams, in the attic of their converted farmhouse. After a most welcome beer and a chat about the day and my experiences, we were treated to a gorgeous meal that Mandy had prepared for us all. And as all day I’d only had the small coffee that my friend in Le Gault had given me and two small chunks of baguette with cheese in that I’d made before leaving home (and which had given me indigestion at 1500ft when I ate them between Abbeville and Le Gault) this and the red wine that Dave insisted I had with it (ahem.. ) went down a real treat, I can tell you. We then sat round talking and having a few more drinks until gone midnight and as I was then ready to crash out.
And I slept like a log, which was great as the day before I’d not got to bed until around 12.15am after finishing off all my preparations for the flight, before getting up at 5.45am to get across to Stoke.
The next morning I didn’t get up until gone 9.00 am, which is most unusual for me. Mandy showed me where everything I needed was and I was then able to enjoy a very relaxed breakfast. It was just as though I was starting a lovely holiday, but in fact I had the last leg of my flight still to do. The trouble was that although I only needed two hours or less to get down to my final destination in the Dordogne, although the weather was good enough for me to get away from Wanafly with a bit of a blustery north-easterly wind and some residual horizontal haze (so not good enough for poor Dave from Calton Moor to get up), down there it was stormy with rain and very low cloud while an occluded front was slowly passing through.
I knew all this, of course, because now that I was so close, Bob was keeping in touch regularly by phone from the Plazac area. And it became even more of a team effort when Dave checked the synoptic on his PC and told me that from the rate the front was moving, there would not be a weather window until later that afternoon when it would clear my destination before another much stronger cold front moved down quickly behind it from the north, probably arriving the next day. So there wasn’t much else I could do except ready MYRO for the flight and enjoy what Wanafly had to offer. What an awful fate….
Here’s the route of the first leg from Stoke across the Channel via Dover to St Inglevert on the Cap Gris Nez and then on to Abbeville, routing around the Class D airspace around Le Touquet. The route images I’ve used in my posts here are taken from screen captures of SkyDemon (30 day trial version). I fully acknowledge their copyright in them and they clearly show the excellence of the software.
The crossing was scheduled to take 21 minutes, which it did, and I was in radio contact with Farnborough East until the FIR boundary (the dark blue line) at which point I changed over to Lille. The first Lille controller I had was male and later I was switched over to a lady. Both were polite and spoke good English albeit with a bit of an accent and I had to request that they ‘say again’ on a few occasions. They were very helpful and didn’t seem to mind, so there’s no reason for anyone doing their first crossing of ‘La Manche’ to worry in the slightest about their radio procedures.
Here’s probably the last ever picture that will be taken from MYRO in UK airspace, which shows me coasting out overhead Dover and banking to turn onto heading for the leg to Cap Gris Nez.
Abbeville came up out of the murk dead on as expected on the GPS so that gave me a lot of confidence, and the vis hadn’t been that bad despite my growing reservations. I called blind on Abbeville Traffic (123.50) and after joining overhead for runway 02 left hand, landed on the grass next to the hard runway. The airfield was almost deserted and as there was no indication of where or how to park I taxied across to the grass in front of the buildings and shut down. I got out and noticed a hand-written sign ‘Affaires’ on the door of the aero club and assumed that that was where I’d be able to sort out closing my flight plan and everything else to do with customs and the police. However, I’d forgotten that I’d left the UK and was now in France where life is somewhat different
Inside the building there was nobody around, let alone someone who looked at all official, but luckily I climbed a small flight of stairs up into the ubiquitous small cafe area and found a gent with a cap with a bobble on it reading the notice boards. He assumed that I wanted to close my flight plan and directed me to a grubby cordless phone across the room, one of those old fashioned ones with a retractable antenna that frankly I haven’t seen for about 20 years! There was a phone number biroed on the wall above it so I dialled it. A voice answered almost immediately at the other end and after I had given MYRO’s registration, he replied ‘Your flight plan is closed. Au revoir’ and that was about it.
My friend in the cap with a bobble on it had been waiting and then said to me, ‘Now you pay taxe in front of flag’. I then noticed another building through the window on the other side of the fuel pump where there was a French flag on a white pole, so I thanked him, in French of course and walked over there. I climbed the steps and entered yet another cafe/bar area where there were various chaps sitting and standing around drinking coffee and smoking. They all looked up as I walked in and seemed friendly enough so I said, ‘Bonjour’ and they all answered in the same way. There was a marvellous French lounge lizard type amongst them with greased down hair and the typically French longish slightly pointed nose and he said ‘Ello, did you ave a nice flight?’ in the most wonderfully French accented English. I said that yes, I had and was just starting on the vis when a small plump chap came scuttling across the room into a side office and I was directed to join him in the ‘bureau’. I noticed that he had the fax on the desk in front of him that I’d sent the previous day to the police/douane number, with a copy to Abbeville. He checked (in French) to make sure I’d closed my flight plan and when I said that I had, he got busy writing what appeared to be a bill. In fact it was the invoice for the landing fee, the princely sum of €3
Then he pushed a large movements sheet in front of me that showed I was the only incoming aircraft so far that day, presumably on account of the weather. I duly filled it in with my details, arrival time and expected departure time. I’d forgotten that French time moved forward one hour when our clocks did – I was assuming that our times were now the same – so I filled the times in incorrectly, but he was far too polite to point this out and left them as I’d written them. When I’d finished and paid my €3, I asked if there was anything else I had to do with regard to the ‘douane’ and the police. He looked at me, smiled in a knowing kind of way and said, ‘Non monsieur’. So that was it, the sum total of all the formalities to do with entering France from the UK. A piece of cake. I think our problem as Brits is that sometimes we are our own worst enemy and look for problems and issues where there are none. The French are much more pragmatic, shrug their shoulders and just do things. I love that attitude and think that we have a lot to learn from them, but we won’t, ever
It was now time to top up my tanks and get moving again. I’d like to have stayed longer and had a cup of coffee but I had a long way to go before my flying day was over and there just wasn’t the time. In the whole time since I’d arrived at Abbeville there was only one other movement, a French registered Robin, and I suppose that was a clue to what was to come. I started up, taxied round, called blind and took off on the grass. As I climbed and turned on track, it was pretty clear that the vis was getting worse than before. Here’s a pic I’ve again captured from the camcorder, which I’d started up again, that shows what I’m talking about.
This shot was taken just after I’d taken off from Abbeville and set course for Le Gault St Denis and at times during the leg, it was considerably worse than the picture shows. Here’s a pic showing the route I’d planned from Abbeville to Le Gault St Dennis.
I don’t have my papers now because they are all still in MYRO in France, but the flight time was something over 2 hours, the time from Stoke to Abbeville being a little under 2 hours.
I can say quite honestly that I never had a proper horizon the whole of the flight down through France and at times the vis was down to what I would estimate was about 3000 metres. This being France, after calling up when approaching and joining overhead at Abbeville, so long as I avoided Class D airspace or above there was no need for me to make any further radio calls, and that was exactly what I planned to do. And because of the limited vis, I doubt that I heard more than a couple of other aircraft on 123.50 the whole way down on the first day which even so I still found quite surprising.
A few words about flying in limited vsibility. Everyone has to to be responsible for making their own decisions about when and when not to fly. It has a lot to do with ‘comfort zone’ and the more experienced you are the more comfortable you are likely to be flying in conditions of limited vis. It’s never possible to make general statements that will apply to all individuals. Having held an IMC rating in a previous life as a Group A pilot, I have very strong views about how suitable or otherwise microlights are as stable instrument platforms so I would never go beyond what I would perceive as being my personal limits and those of the aircraft. But on the other hand because of my previous training and experience, I am more comfortable than many others about flying in conditions which they might find unacceptable for themselves.
On this occasion I always had a good view of the terrain below my aircraft and there were always adequate visual cues to allow me to fly the aircraft accurately, on track and in a safe attitude. And this, being France, there were almost always more fields below than you could shake a stick at that would be suitable to land in should the need arise.
I say ‘almost always’. My Channel crossing had taken about 21 minutes which at a height of about 5000ft I didn’t regard as being much of a risk because with an engine failure after about a third of the way over, I could more or less have glided to France with the tail wind that I had. However, there were many occasions when I was flying through the murk at low level (around 1400ft) for almost the same amount of time over thick forests or hilly, rocky terrain with little or no road access, where there was absolutely no chance of making a safe forced landing and nothing could therefore be done to mitigate the risk involved. And there were also many occasions when, with the sink and turbulence associated with the broken low cloud I was flying under, I found myself at climb power and speed and still sinking before usually suddenly being whisked up again.
Another thing I experienced which others who had never done so might have found a bit disconcerting was that when there was nothing ahead and around the aircraft but green fields, the land and sky merged ahead into a kind of soup that transitioned from green below through into grey above with absolutely no sign of a horizon. It didn’t worry me too much because I had seen it many times before when flying IMC in Group A and on this occasion I still had good close ground contact that gave me all the visual cues I needed to continue flying the aircraft accurately and safely. And my GPS gave me a line to track just as I used to do before when tracking a VOR, so in many ways it was all very familiar.
My flight leg from Abbeville to Le Gault St Denis went just as planned and my main disappointment was that not only was I unable to take photographs of the beautiful landscape and features that I was flying over but I also couldn’t even see much of it either! In fact, just before arriving at Le Gault, my route took me around the west side of Chartres and even though I had occasional glimpses of the twin towers of the cathedral in the mist, I couldn’t make out any discernible features at all. Such a shame!
Another thing I found and filed away as a mental note for the route ahead, was that as I was flying along, I kept encountering quite a few of the many thousands of wind turbines that now blight the French landscape. Most of them are not very high and so were some way below the aircraft even if I passed right over them. However, there are many in France including the area I was flying over that are absolute monsters and although none came up to the height I was flying at, the ones of those that I did encounter, I had to skirt around to maintain a safe and legal separation from.
As I was approaching Le Gault and searching over MYRO’s nose for the little airstrip that I had ‘visited’ in Google Street View, so knew exactly what I was looking for, another group of wind turbines appeared out of the gloom to my left. In fact they were a help rather than a hazard because then I knew exactly where to look for the tiny ‘piste’, which I immediately spotted from a right hand downwind position and landed at safely.
)
They have always said that the French keep the best of their wines for themselves and export the rest and I think there could be some truth in that.
Roger 
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