Belgium, England, France - DAY 4 (Isle of Wight & France)

So here’s DAY 4 (the final day) of my trip report (DAY 1 here, DAY2 here, DAY3 here).

After a good night’s sleep in the Crab & Lobster Inn at Bembridge, it was Saturday, the 3rd of May and the day I had to return to Mannheim, so it was going to be a lot of flying. The nice thing was the weather. High pressure and sunshine were now dominating the entire northwest of Europe. Additionally, I knew I could land at Mannheim until 20:00 local time, so I was very relaxed and was looking forward to a great day. The plan was made to spend most of the morning on the Isle of Wight and depart just before noon.

Most UK readers will know the Isle of Wight very well. However, other readers from Europe may not, so here we go with a few impressions. Even before breakfast, I did a short early morning walk by the beach.

Here’s the inn once again.

White Cliff Bay.

Here’s the (by now famous) “Beach Hut Cafe”. I actually met the owners the evening before and they welcomed me for lunch the next day, but I had to decline since it would have delayed me too much.

Full English Breakfast at the Crab & Lobster was great.

A walk around Bembridge revealed this Bed ’n Breakfast, which I hear is run by a woman named Tiffany.

Crab & Lobster again.

Beautiful views over Bembridge harbour.

The view over towards Portsmouth.

Little Stonehenge?

Lifeboat Pier.

A Golf Green with daisy flowers up on the cliffs.

A was about 11ish when I took the taxi over to the airfield. As regards the flying, I wanted to visit as many airfields as possible on my way back without taking too many detours from the direct route. So, what I did is draw a straight line between Bembridge and Mannheim and see what was on the way. That route would later take me along the French-Belgian border and then roughly via the south of Luxembourg. There were some constaints though. First of all, I didn’t obviously want to cross the Channel directly on that track, since it would take me over the water for an unduly long time. Also, I had to clear Schengen immigration on my first stop on the continent. In the end, the most sensible thing turned out to be to follow the English South Coast up to Beachy Head and then make a stop at Le Touquet. I know, always Le Touquet sounds a bit boring, but in the end, it is always a pleasure, with lots of flying action, good service and just 2 hours PN for immigration.

Off we go. Wheels off at approximately 11.30 British time.

Again, great views.

Caribbean allusions.

Heading east and waving goodbye to Bembridge and the Isle of Wight.

Flying past Selsey Bill, I opened my flightplan with London Information and then changed over to Farnborough. Again, no traffic service to be had. Pointless.

I was flying a few miles parallel to the coast, so technically always within glide distance. Still, always good to look out for small boats like these.

By the way, just off Brighton, I already received a rock solid bearing from the LTQ NDB…

Nicely coloured waters over the British Channel. Incredible what wonders a bit of sunshine can do…

One last glimpse of Britain and Beachy Head before a 20 degree to the right (inbound LTQ) was made.

An interesting SD feature: glide range depiction.

Again, I was always looking out for small boats. I would say that, of the approximately fifteen minutes spent out of glide range of land, I would have been able to glide towards a boat about half of the time.

I love shots over the water with the sun head on.

Approaching Le Touquet.

Lefthand downwind. What followed was a bit of a hectic moment (hence no more photos). There were other aircraft approaching, these mostly doing righthand circuits. Just after I called turning base, Tower said something like “[…] FV, you are number two to follow a Cessna on base”. I said “I can’t see him at all” and he said something like “you’ll be alright, he’ well ahead of you”. However, I coudn’t see anyone ahead of me. It was then that I slowly realized that there was a G-FV following me. Might have been my fault, since I didn’t expect that and probably just took for granted that all transmissions including “FV” were adressed to me. Lesson: Always listen very carefully!

As expected on a day like this, the parking at Le Touquet was packed (13:40 French time now). Luckily, just as I was taxying around, looking for a free spot, a departing Cardinal moved out of it’s parking postion. That’s what got me this pleasant parking position.

As always when at Le Touquet, some “spotting” was in order.
A nicely painted Mooney M20J.

V35B.

A Robin President. Beautiful aircraft.

I had seen this Cardinal RG here almost exactly a year ago. Seems to be a frequent visitor.

A nice F model Cessna 172.

G-REST, again, a frequent visitor to Le Touquet.

Since I didn’t really have to the time (nor the money left ) for a proper lunch, I had brought along a small pic-nic from Bembridge. Whilst I enjoyed the pic-nic, I watched the refueller whizz around from one aircraft to the next one. I had figured that I could actually make it safely back home with just the fuel that I had taken on at Goodwood, but since I wasn’t really sure yet how many more stops I would make, I decided to top off the tanks one more time.

I decided on Lens-Benifontaine (LFQL, near Lille) as my next stop, a mere 30 minutes southeast.
Taxying out to runway 32.

Wheels off.

Big parts of the French Northeast are quite boring, in my view.

The area is also much more hilly than one might expect. Flying at 1000 MSL does not really work well. This was no problem where I was, but in the north of Paris, the TMA forces pilots very low over the ground in some places. It is actually worse than in the Milan area. In addition, they seem to have become obsessed with wind farms…

Here’s Lens-Benifontaine. Like all small airfields in France, it is Air / Air only. At least, this airfield has a discrete radio frequency, so it was easy to coordinate with the other traffic (you might be able to see the yellow aircraft on short final).

Benifonataine has a lot of skydiving action on weekends. They use a PC-6 for that.

After a short stop, I made another very short hop to an airfield in the vicinity, Arras-Roclincourt (LFQD). This one does not have a discrete radio frequency and uses the common 123.50 frequency. The result is a lot of chatter and it is quite a challenge to discern the relevant calls from those regarding other airfields.
Turning final.

A rather sleepy place it was.

Off I was again, heading southeastbound. Flying past Vitry-en-Artois (LFQS).

Valenciennes-Denain (LFAV).

Valenciennes. Nice stadium.

Old water tower.

Mauberge-Elesmes (LFQJ) is situated in right next to Belgian border. The city and the airfield didn’t look inviting at all though, so I just opted for a touch ’n go.

Once past Mauberge, the landscape really turned much more interesting and pleasant, since I was then reaching the southern foothills of the Ardennes. Note to pilots: if you are looking for a scenic route, avoid the general Lille area and generally most of the far northeast of France. The stretch from Mauberge all the way south to Luxembourg is much nicer.

A typical town.

A barrier Lake near Fourmies. I actually clipped a very small piece of Belgium here.

A little further ahead, my DFS chart for Belgium showed an airfield with a huge runway (but no ICAO code), Rocroi Regniowicz. SD also showed it, with the remark “Private AD, no further data”. On the Jepp chart, it was marked as disused. Curious to see what was there, I flew overhead, but indeed, the airfield seemed to disused and used only for cars racing these days.

Apparently, they’re plowing a new highway through the beautiful woods of the Ardennes.

My next stop, Charleville-Mézières (LFQV).

Now that was quite an weird place. A rather small town in the middle of nowhere. However, the airport has a 1500 metre runway and seems to have had (in the past) even instrument approaches and runway lighting. Nowadays, it is all in decay and the amtosphere is a little weird.
They even have a “terminal” there, with separate “arrivals” and “departures” rooms…

There was a very sad airport bar there (open) and a few – sorry for that – strange people.
Anyway, better a weird airport than a closed airport. I took off again and proceeded along the river Meuse…

…towards the town centre, which does look quite nice though.

The next town on my way was Sedan.

Its airfield (Sedan-Douzy, LFSJ), was to be my last stop in France before heading home to Mannheim.

Nice reflections on the windows…

I had filed my VFR flightplan from Sedan to Mannheim when I was still in Le Touquet and the flightplanned EOBT just worked out brilliantly – 17:20 local time.
After departure it was again a southeasterly heading, proceeding parallel to the French-Belgian border, roughly inbound to Luxembourg airport (ELLX). Since I didn’t know if I could raise any FIS in that area of France, I just went straight to Luxembourg Approach and sure enough, reception was excellent, even at just 1500 feet AGL and still 60 miles or so out.
Here’s the city of Luxembourg, way in the distance.

To be very honest, I was slighty unhappy with Luxembourg Approach. Even though there was not a huge amount of traffic, they would not allow me to cross their CTR on my direct track to Mannheim and instead asked me to route to the south.

There was one positive thing to this though… due to the righthand turn, my flight took past one of the most famous small towns in Europe:

This, my friends, is Schengen! Here are two more photos:

It is situated right in the border triangle of Germany, Luxembourg and France. That is why it was chosen as a symbolic location for the signature of that famous treaty that facilitates our flying so much nowadays. Well, at least for most of us…

Back in good old Germany.

A beautiful sinuosity of the river Saar.

Marpingen gliding airfield. Unfortunately, gliding airfields are restricted to gliders in Germany.

45 miles to run. By this time, I had already tuned the radio frequency of Ramstein (ETAR), 133.2, since I intended to cross their CTR (which is indeed active 24/7).

The american tower controller was very relaxed and cleared me through with no restrictions. “Just report when clear” is what he said with his american accent.
Here’s Ramstein, the United States Air Forces headquarters for Europe and Africa. It’s the biggest US Air Force facility outside the States.

Checking out a bit what the Yanks are doing tonight…

50,000 people working and living there…

Approaching Kaiserslautern.

Here’s the city…

…and this one is for a couple of my friends, who are supporters of the 1. FC.

Crossing the Pfälzer Wald.

Bad Dürkheim.

EDRF.

Ludwigshafen.

River Rhine.

Final 09 at Mannheim.

After a thourogh cleaning, back in the shed. Well done, Fox Victor!

All back to “cold”. 9.2 hours on the tach. A brilliant little tour has come to an end.