Alasdair's Site

Mid-winter in England can bring some beautiful flying days with smooth air, crystal-clear visibility and excellent aircraft performance in the dense cold air. Such days are worth savouring, not least because they are a little rare! More common over the last few winters has been grey skies, waterlogged airfields and of course the unavoidable darkness at not long after noon.

One obvious solution is to escape to somewhere with a better climate. Spain is a popular choice with several British microlight schools in particular offering training there during the winter months. A friend of mine who runs Cloudbase Aviation at Redhill was doing just that at the start of the year, and was taking two aircraft on their winter migration to the sun. One of them was a Shadow microlight which was going by trailer but the other was a Cessna 150 that was going to have to travel to Muchamiel, just north of Alicante, under its own steam.

A flight to Spain in the middle of winter in, to put it politely, an aircraft of modest performance, is just the kind of perverse challenge that appeals to me so I sent off an email on New Year's Day volunteering for the task.

Three days later it was all arranged and it was then a matter of keeping an eye on the forecasts and awaiting a window of opportunity to make the trip. Since this required passable weather over three countries in January I thought that I might be in for a long wait.

I have an IMC rating so had more flexibility with the weather for the UK part of the trip as long as conditions were good enough to actually get out of Redhill, but from the French boundary on I needed VFR conditions.

I spent a lot of my time at work on the Monday and Tuesday checking various weather sites on the Internet. Amazingly it soon seemed as if it might be possible to make the trip that very week. By the end of Tuesday I'd decided to go for it and told my boss that I would be away for the rest of the week, hoped to be back on Monday, but couldn't be entirely sure!

Fortunately the Spanish charts I'd ordered online on Sunday evening arrived just in time and a pilot colleague and I keep a full set of European Bottlang guides at work, so I had all the information I needed.

Day 1

On Wednesday morning I was up early for a final check of METARs, TAFs and NOTAM before setting off to Redhill.

I was a little later than I'd hoped to be, so after a quick chat with in the clubrooms it was time to pre-flight the Cessna, load up my bags, plug in the GPS and get ready to go.

I'd been expecting to have to depart from the taxiway on account of the grass being waterlogged, but as a special bonus there was a runway open so after a long taxi around the airfield perimeter I was on my way from 19.

There was a low overcast which I stayed berneath until the London airspace allowed me to climb first into the cloud and then, a little later, out of the top into lovely bright sunshine.

On this first leg I was only aiming for Le Touquet in order to get Customs formalities out of the way right at the start and allow for more flexibility for the rest of the day. I talked to Lydd for the first part of the Channel crossing then switched to Le Touquet as I approached the boundary, dropping back down through the cloud as I did so since the magic spell of the IMC wears off outside the UK.

I was the only light aircraft on the apron at Le Touquet which was a novel experience in itself. I paused just long enough to refuel the aircraft and then set off again, turning due south this time. I was hoping to make Macon, but as I flew on under more low cloud it was clear that the headwind made that impracticable. After about an hour the cloudbase had lifted and there was even some sunshine. I had decided to head for  Dijon Darois but as the sun started to go down a carpet of fog began creeping northwards and made that impossible too,  so I ended up stopping at the small airfield at Semur En Auxois, about 25 miles west of Dijon. The field itself was completely deserted and I was glad I'd brought along a guidebook which gave the number of a local taxi firm, especially as it was getting cold fast as the sun disappeared. I found a little hotel in the town and then went out to the one restaurant which was open and ordered the slightly odd combination of snails followed by pizza for dinner.

Day 2

I got up early and headed back out to the still-deserted airfield. I never did see another soul there, and if they normally charge a landing fee then I still owe it to them!

I spent the first hour scraping several millimetres of frost off the aircraft with the only suitable tool I had; my AA membership card. There was still a good deal of mist around, and solid fog to the east. My mobile phone with its built-in web browser was invaluable for getting weather information, as well as for actually talking to airfields of course.


I spent some time ringing ahead to find an airfield within range that had fuel and wasn't fogged in. In the end I settled on St Yan and set off in that direction, but again found that the headwind had brought my groundspeed right down. When I came over a ridge to see a great expanse of fog in front of me I realised it was decision time.

The temptation was to press on and assume that St Yan would still be clear when I got there, especially since the alternative was to return to a deserted airfield and a delay that might extend to a day or more. The drawback was that if St Yan closed I'd then be low on fuel; possibly too low to get to an alternative.

I'd recently watched the King DVD on risk management in light aircraft flying, and it had identified this sort of scenario (a definite, and possibly achievable, goal on the one hand, contrasted with a high probability of delay and inconvenience on the other) as one of the ones which most often leads to pilots continuing on into worsening conditions and gradually running out of options. I decided that the risks I'd face by perhaps having to spend an extra day or so in a little French town were preferable to those involved in running out of fuel over fog-covered hill country.

Decision made, I banked the aircraft round and landed at another small field at Saulieu, only 15 miles south of Semur where I'd started from 40 minutes earlier. It was minus 3 degrees and again completely deserted, but I didn't regret being on the ground. I ended up sitting in the aircraft for a couple of hours until somebody arrived who was able to unlock the clubhouse and sell me some fuel.

By then the weather had improved and I had fuel and with it plenty of options, so I set off due south to the regional airport of Saint Etienne, enjoying some wonderful views of the Alps bathed in sunlight 100 miles to the east, rising above the fog-filled Rhone valley.

With tanks topped up again the next leg was a two hour flight south over the mountains of the eastern Auvergne to Montpellier. The scenery was beautiful, the mountains covered in snow and the valleys filled with rolling rivers of mist. The flying itself was quite relaxing, with no other traffic around and nobody much to talk to. I was navigating using my charts and VOR and NDB when beacons were within range, supplemented by my GPS for when they weren't.

As I came out of the mountains I talked to Orange to negotiate a clearance through a military restricted area and then to Montpellier Approach as I neared my destination.

Montpellier-Méditerranée is a large regional airport with two parallel runways. I was offered a choice and modestly chose the shorter 31L since I didn't think that I'd need the alternative of nearly 3km of runway to get the Cessna down.

I was very impressed at the airfield, especially the very smart GA terminal, all for a landing fee lower than most small grass fields in the UK. I left the little Cessna parked on the GA apron for the night in the company of a number of very smart aircraft. It was probably the least valuable machine there by a margin of many tens of thousands of pounds, so I wasn't too worried about the fact that the passenger door lock didn't work.

I'd never been to Montpellier before so I got a taxi into the centre of the city and explored it that evening before enjoying another fine French meal.

Day 3

Another early start saw me at the airfield as it was getting light. Now that I was further south it was much warmer, so there was no frost to deal with this morning and I was able to file my flight plan and get away in good time. There was still some morning mist in the air and the hills I’d passed the day before were now shadowy and indistinct in the distance as I climbed away and left Monpellier behind me. As I gained height the visibility improved and it was then a simple matter of following the coast all the way to Barcelona. The whole of the French Meditteranean coastline is beautiful for flying, especially the low-level route from Montpellier to the east past Marseilles, but this time I was going the other way. The stretch down towards Narbonne has plenty to see too, particularly the resorts built on long spits of sand enclosing the many coastal lagoon.

I knew from the weather forecasts that there was some nasty frontal cloud coming from the west; one of the reasons for my early start that day since it’s hard to win a race against anything, even a cloud, at 80 knots in a 150! The front was plain to see as I passed Perpignan, but it was still too far away to cause me any trouble. Perpignan’s controller wanted me not above 2,000' as I followed the coast towards the border so I had to go around rather than over the Pyrennes as I finally crossed into Spain.

It was a little bumpy passing the end of the mountains, but two-and-a-half hours after leaving Montpellier I landed at Barcelona Sabadell in some very welcome warm sunshine - my first ever landing in Spain.

I spent an hour on the ground at Barcelona refuelling myself and the Cessna (enlivened by much gesticulation as my lack of Spanish, and filing another flight plan since they are compulsory in Spain for all flights through controlled airspace.

It was now the final leg of the journey, and the last chance for the weather gods to throw entertain themselves. Wind was the weapon they chose, and the journey from Barcelona down past Reus was the roughest leg of the trip as the westerly howled down over the coastal hills. The combination of turbulence and the rather extreme crab angle required to counter the crosswind meant that my groundspeed got down to a dispiriting 45 knots at one stage. At that speed I knew I wouldn’t make Alicante and so I started to plan a diversion into Valencia for fuel. Fortunately though things started to improved after I passed Reus. Clear by now of Barcelona’s low-level airspace, I was able to climb to 5,000' and soon spotted some lenticular cloud ahead.

Dredging up my 20-year-old gliding experience I headed for where I thought the lift would be and sure enough I was soon surfing down the coast at a speed which was almost respectable. It's certainly the only time I've had a Cessna 150 doing over 100 knots while at climbing at 1,100fpm!

The prospect of having to make the extra stop now receded and after a mere 3 hours the distinctive promontory of the Cabo de la Nao north of Alicante came into view. I even had time to circle over the town of Javea taking photos of the area where I used to go on family holidays as a child. The landscape was recognisable, but the amount of new development in the intervening decades was vast.

From Javea it was only another 20 minutes down to Muchamiel, passing over the forest of concrete tower blocks which make up Benidorm; another place transformed from the small town that I remembered.

My friend had arrived at Muchamiel that morning after a three day drive, and another ex-patriot pilot had come out to man the airfield radio so the locals were spared what would have been my struggle with the Spanish RT crib sheet I had with me.

The wind was still quite strong and gusty which gave me the most interesting landing of the whole trip, but I was soon safely down and heading into the clubhouse for what the Scandinavians call a landing beer!

The next day we flew the short distance down to Alicante airport and back to fill the Cessna with Avgas since the supplies at Muchamiel are for club aircraft only. Even though this was not much more than a 15-minute trip it still involved calling the airport for a landing slot and filing a flight plan.

I spent Saturday enjoying the Spanish sunshine and then caught a commercial flight back to Gatwick on Sunday morning. The journey that had taken me 15 flying hours over three days in the Cessna took 2 hours in the 737. Slightly quicker, but much less fun!

Altogether it was a great trip, and an unexpected bonus in the middle of winter when the weather often keeps us grounded. I do like flying modern machines, and I wouldn't always want to have to go quite so slowly, but there is a great sense of satisfaction to be had from doing a long trip in a simple aircraft without autopilot, glass cockpit or most other modern devices, apart from the GPS and the mobile phone. Planning your way around the winter weather and the short days is satisfying when it works out, but this is not the kind of trip to attempt if you absolutely have to reach your destination by a certain time.

When I eventually brought the same aircraft back in May I did the whole journey in a day and a half, taking advantage of the long evenings and the clear mornings, but it’s the winter flight that I’ll really remember.