Day: March 1, 2015

We had a very interesting day yesterday. The evening before, I’d received a message from Victor and when I phoned him back I received some exciting news. He’d been in touch with an English speaking family who own a local chateau. The property was once owned by a European caravan tycoon who used to keep a single engine aircraft there and up to about twenty years ago, part of the land belonging to the chateau was set out as an airfield. The area of land still exists and is still recognisable as such despite becoming slightly overgrown, but after Victor had made contact with the current owner, they had said that they would not be totally averse to turning it back into an airfield. So yesterday Wim and I bundled into the Mehari with Victor for an exploratory visit.

Things didn’t get off to a very auspicious start because although the field in question was rather waterlogged, Victor decided to drive the Mehari onto it. It promptly became bogged down, so Wim and I hopped out to see if we could help extract it from the trenches it was digging in the soft ground by giving it a good push. But to no avail, and we only managed to do so later on with the help of the chateau owner and her son when we were about to leave.

But back to the point of our visit. As soon as we drove onto the field, it was obvious that this was an area of land of some promise and it was clear why the former owner had used it as an airfield. I’m not going to show any pictures of it for obvious reasons but it would not take long to recreate a runway at least 220 metres in length gently sloping towards the south-west with a run-off area at the end of it. Due to trees at its northerly end, take-offs would always need to be made to the south-west and landings in the opposite direction, but experience at Galinat and elsewhere has shown that this poses no problems whatsoever. And not only that, the barn where the former owner kept his aircraft still exists, containing various items left over from that time, and would be large enough if cleared out to take at least three or four ULMs!

The original wind sock is even still there. It’s now in the middle of a clump of small bushes that would need to be cleared away but it appears to be fully operational and would only need a new sleeve and a good coat of paint to get it back to full working order.

The weather isn’t helping us now because the local forecast is for several days of continuous rain. Even once it stops, it’ll take several more for the land to dry out so Wim and I can make some experimental landings on it. The owner’s son was enthusiastic about taking a flight with me in 56NE to see the field and the surrounding area from the air, but even this might not be possible for a week or more if Galinat, which I’ve not visited since my last flight, has also become waterlogged as it did last year.

So things cannot move forward very much for now. But this is an exciting time. It would be easy to envisage what the airfield could become in quite a short time. With the land cleared, the surface rolled flat and the runway set out with end and side markers, it could very easily become one of the prime touring airfields in the Dordogne. The chateau owner likes the idea because she has gites for rent, so who knows what kind of future could be in store for it if we can take it forward. However, these are early days and for now we must just take one small step at a time 😉