Yes, I went on holiday again. My Dad is a private pilot (soon to be flight instructor) and flies a nice little light plane that can carry about 3 people and minimal luggage. My parents and I flew to Orleans via Le Touquet. We flew out in the morning of the 23rd (Tuesday) at about 11am BST.
A ship we saw on the way over! With sails and rigging and everything!
The crossing was fine – very sunny weather and not too bumpy. A bit hazy. It took about 45 minutes to reach Le Touquet where we had a cuppa and refuelled. We refuelled the plane that is.
On finals at Le Touquet. The shaded thing on the left is the prop.
Us having a coffee in the bar of the aeroclub. They make better coffee over there.
We then took off again for Orleans. It took about 90 minutes to get there, which is about my limit with flying. I get a little nauseous, especially when asked to map read etc. So we get there at about 5pm local time (4pm BST, 3pm GMT. Aren’t times fun), and the hire car didn’t turn up. So we had to order a cab to the hire car place, and then argue with a girl we couldn’t speak the same language as until we sorted out the car. Then we had to find the hotel. That was fun – we had no maps (the silly hire car place didn’t provide maps) and we had a very vague and incorrect address for the hotel. We eventually found it at about 7.40pm local time. Luckily although the guy didn’t speak any English either he had a sense of humour and just spoke slowly and did actions so we could understand!
The hotel was in a very strange place – it was in a kind of industrial/retail park! We kept expecting to see a Curries or something. Anyway, having found it (eventually) we dumped our bags and went to the local Buffalo Grill for dinner. Which was really nice – nice atmosphere and delicious food.
The next day (Wednesday) we went to Blois, which had a large chateau in it that was steeped in the history of the royal family.
Mum and Dad get ideas for the hall…
Nice decor… the whole place was covered in gold leaf. It was stunning, and of course, unlike England, there weren’t any of these silly rules about taking photos inside historic buildings. So I went a bit barmy 🙂 Lovely views as well:
It was built in 4 parts over 600 years
We then went to the House of Magie opposite which was dedicated to the magician and illusionist, Houndin. Not Houdini – Houdin. Houdini called himself that in recognition of Houdin’s genius.
The dragon show from the House of Magie – they howled and moved for about 10 minutes.
That evening we went back to the Buffalo Grill. Bit more crowded this time but still very nice food and atmosphere.
The next day we got up and drove out to the airport to check opening times. Naturally, it closed for lunch. The weather was abyssmal – raining torrentially. Updates from my Dad’s pilot friends let us know that hopefully the weather would clear later in the day as we planned to fly home… Since there was no way we’d take off before lunch we went to a maratime museum nearby at the Chateauneuf. Despite my inability to read even English historical information for any length of time, that was very interesting, and we wandered around the gardens outside afterwards, with the trees dripping and the sky being threatening. However when we got to the airport and by the time Dad had checked the weather reports, the cloud level had raised enough and was starting to break up, so we were ok to take off at about 3pm.
The flight back was rather bumpy as scattered clouds make for scattered thermals. Mum finds it boring when it’s not bumpy, so she was happy. I was going between happy and nauseous.
Dad and Mum
Me 🙂 And yes, I did take it myself. I was chief camerawoman who resorted to snapping herself since everyone else was either busy or asleep. Note seemingly oblivious pose though – must keep up the appearance of being snapped. I took over 250 photos in total – most of scenery when flying admittedly but I have worried my parents a little – how one can take so many photos in 3 days…
Although the flight was stunning we landed at Le Touquet being chucked about a bit – helluva crosswind. We then got a cab into a very windy Le Touquet, ate crepes and went to the beach. Mum paddled and I filmed seagulls who had to walk sideways to save being blown over. It was blinding sunshine but a very strong wind.
We ended up walking back to the airport as there were no cabs, complete with clinking bottles from the intermarche. It takes about 30 minutes at a fast walk. As we were walking the weather slowly drew in. As we walked into the airport it really drew in and became very menacing, with thunder to the west. We legged it into the plane, did the fastest pre-flight checks ever and even the tower responded to us as fast as possible as they could tell we were trying to escape the thunderstorm that was about to hit the area. Had we not escaped it we would have been stuck in Le Touquet overnight. As we climbed out the storm neatly moved in and the airport disappeared…
Outrunning the storm.
We had to make a few adjustments to our course to avoid the storm and the rainclouds that popped up left and right, but it wasn’t too difficult. The plane can outrun storms of that size quite easily. One nice thing about bad weather though is it makes for spectacular scenery.
Wow…
3 Responses to I return!