Westbound (part 3 of 3)

Here is part 1 and part 2.

Actually, this was *east*bound rather than *west*bound, as it was the return part of my flight to Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. As you can imagine, the return was flown across the north of France. This part had the least good weather and consequentially, most of the photos didn’t turn out quite as nice. But we still managed to vist three nice places and get three interesting French airports into our logbooks.

The first destination on the return part of the trip was Brittany. I have previously been to the very northeast (Avranches) and the very southwest of of Brittany (Quiberon), but not a lot in between. We eventually decided on Quimper (LFRQ) which Seemed a good base for exploring that area with a rented car.

I filed the flightplan out of St. Mary’s the night before departure, with a couple of pints of beer, a glass of Shiraz and two Calvados in my head, but more importantly, I filed it with nothing but my iphone, so I couldn’t actually see what Rocketroute was suggesting (I know, I know…I’m now using Autorouter only, see part 1). It later turned out that I had filed this:

…but I didn’t worry much about the routing, since I knew that the first part could be flown totally in class G anyway, so after departure from St. Mary’s, I would just point the nose towards Quimper and then sort out the rest with Brest Control when at the FIR boundary. Flightplanned ETE was 01:30h, but realistically, I didn’t expect much more than one hour of flight.

I also sent an e-mail to Quimper airport as they need prior notice for immigration. Oh, and I also managed to book a rental car somehow.

As mentioned in part 2, our departure on the next day was planned for 3 o’clock in the afternoon. One word of note here: that was a Sunday, and the airport at St. Mary’s is actually closed on Sundays. They do however allow departures on Sunday afternoons, for those not requiring a licensed runway (all private flights, essentially). One needs to do a little paperwork exercise at the tower for that (signing an imdemnity form) and one obviously can’t do that on Sundays. So if you fly to the Scillies and there is a chance you will have to depart on a Sunday, best get that imdemnity form done anyway, right after arrival (it doesn’t cost any extra money). That’s what I had done the day before.

As mentioned, the weather had turned nice in the early morning hours and stayed nice until noon. After that, it was a rapid succession of small showers moving through…. typical English weather.

Also, as mentioned, before leaving for the airfield, we incidentally met Peter H. (who was departing towards Cambridge). We actually shared the same taxi to the airfield and simultaneously prepared our aircraft (whilst a short but strong shower came down… ). Winds were out of the southwest, so 27 was the preferred runway for both of us.

During taxi, it was still very cloudy. Here we are on runway 14, just about to turn left onto runway 09 for backtrack.

And here is the threshold of runway 27, just as we were about to turn around. Certainly not a good place for an overrun!

After takeoff, we activated our flightplan with Newquay Radar and stayed with them during our climb to FL90. Conditions were cloudy, with occasional breaks in the cloud cover.

Approaching the FIR boundary towards Brest (about mid-Channel), we changed frequencies and as expected, Brest cleared us more or less direct to Quimper.

Over Brittany, it was mostly cloudy again.

Here we are, descending, inbound to ROSPO, but later on, we were given radar vectors (ILS).

The typical landscapes of Brittany peaked through every now and then.

And here we are, on the coupled intercept of the localizer for runway 27. See the annunciations “AP”, “NAV”, “APPR”, “ALT” and “GS”.

On final, a look to the left, towards Concarneau.

Quimper.

The landing was uneventful and the airport was totally quiet. LFRQ is what one would call an “ugly airport”.

We taxied to the pumps (straight ahead) and once we had figured out how to get it started (BP…), we filled up the tanks again. Only 78 litres or so but one never knows. We then taxied the aircraft to its parking position on the main apron, in company with a Danish-registered Mooney M20F and an N-registered Piper Seneca.

We took the pre-booked rental car and decided to head towards the coast just south of Quimper. In the early evening, we arrived and took a hotel room at Concarneau, one of the bigger places on that part of the coast. It has a walled old town situated on an island. Luckily, the sun came out as we went out for dinner.

If you are into fish/seafood, then you can’t go wrong in Brittany.

The next morning, we headed for the local market. The stuff was of great quality but also expensive (as always in France).

Concarneau not only has tourism, but also quite a lot of fish industry. In addition, it has a rather big and busy shipyard, and since there wasn’t any kind of security at the entrance, we drove all around the place, watching workers welding steel, installing propellers, etc. Good fun.

Bénodet is close to Concarneau, but is more about beaches and boating/sailing. We had lunch there.

But since it didn’t look like the sun would come out any soon, we decided to leave Brittany and headed for the airport. The idea was to go somewhere else that was more or less on our route back home. We decided on Chartres. With its famous cathedral, it’s a place I had always wanted to visit but up to that point, it has never been “on the way” to somewhere for me.

The airfield at Chartres (LFOR) is a typical French provincial airfield: No ILS, no customs, no ATC/AFIS, and fuel only with a TOTAL card. Peter’s dream airport, so to speak.

This is the IFR routing from Quimper. Another one-hour flight.

Chartres in only about 90 km from Paris and the airfield is only a couple of km from the town centre.

Here we are, turning eastbound on the omnidirectional departure from Quimper’s runway 27.

Most of the flight was over a broken cloud cover, at FL110.

The good thing about this flight was the speed: 165 KTAS on 11.9 GPH felt good. 207 knots ground speed felt even better…

….and it didn’t get any worse during the descent obviously…

Getting lower, we got to see some of that central French scenery. The visibility below the clouds was fantastic and the colours of the harvested fields were amazing.

Oh, and for who doesn’t believe it: at no point did we cancel IFR. We simply left the controlled airspace and that was it.

Here we are, just north of Chartres. The airport is on the very left.

Despite quite a strong wind, the circuit was buzzing with students in C152s, but coordination with the other traffic worked fine. It’s rather unusal to fly the downwind at 80 knots in the Cirrus.

On final.

After landing, we closed our flightplan by phone, fuelled up (50 litres or so) and taxied the aircraft over to the visitor’s parking area. The people from the Aeroclub welcomed us and kindly called us a taxi. No landing or parking fees.

This is the clubhouse. There were about 15 (mostly young) people in there, apparently all “into flying”.

In the morning, I had booked us into a hotel in the old town, close to the cathedral. If you ever go to Chartres, take my recommendation: “Hotellerie St. Yves”. A simple, but good hotel, located in what seems like an old convent. Very reasonable prices, too.

Here’s a first view of the cathedral, from the taxi.

And the view from our hotel room.

This is Chartres Cathedral in detail.

This is Sancta Camisa, believed to be the tunic worn by the Blessed Virgin Mary at the time of Christ’s birth.

A few more views of the cathedral from outside.

Here’s a definite tip for dinner in Chartres: go to “Cafè Serpente” (right by the cathedral). Great food (meat dishes mostly) and wines. No entirely cheap, but well worth it.

The next day’s plan was to fly back home to Germany. But since Paris was on our way, we decided to spend the day there before flying home in the early evening. Normally, when I go to Paris by plane, I use Lognes (LFPL), since that makes the most sense if coming from Germany. This time, coming from Chartres, was a good occasion to try out one of the GA airfields in the west of the city. I was undecided between Les Mureaux (LFXU) and St. Cyr L’École (LFPZ). I didn’t want to go to Toussus as that is “on the beaten track”. In the end, I decided on St. Cyr, as that is the place with the shortest distance between the airfield and the train station.

Here’s the Skydemon view of that short VFR hop.

We left the hotel at 8.15h in the morning and took a taxi to Chartres airfield. As expected, there was not a single soul at the airfield yet.

We prepared the plane, started it up, made our traffic calls and at 9 o’clock sharp, we were in the air. Honestly, it doesn’t get much better than that! I don’t need to go to the US (10 hours in the airliner, eapis, security checks, US Immigration…) to get my dose of “flying freedom”. It’s all there, in France, at least most of it.

On the upwind after departure on 29, one gets more good views of the cathedral.

Here’s a good one. I could see the window of our hotel room – we left it open when we left 45 minutes before.

The short flight to St. Cyr was at 1400 feet MSL, to stay below the Paris TMA. There is a lot of VFR traffic there (same thing as below the London TMA). We spotted several small aircraft departing St. Cyr and Toussus.

Here we are on right hand downwind for 29 at St. Cyr.

The visibility wasn’t too good, so a faint glimpse of Tour Eiffel and Tour Montparnasse was all we could get.

In turn, the views of Chateau Versailles during the base leg were superb.

Turning final for 29L.

Touchdown was at 9.15h. St. Cyr airfield is very laid back. No need to complete any formalities in the tower, since the fees are supposed to be invoiced by mail. We walked straight out of the airfield and towards the train station. It’s a solid twenty-minute walk – no problem and actually quite pleasant if you have no or little baggage.

I will not show you any pictures of Paris this time…. the sun wasn’t out anyway. Just one:

“Saucisse de Morceau aux Lentilles”. Yumm.

We were back at the airfield by 5 o’clock. This is the airfield café at St. Cyr.

One of those omnipresent Robin aircraft.

The IFR flightplan to Luebeck (EDHL) had already been prepared and filed the night before… properly this time! Unfortunately, flying from Paris to the north of Germany always involves a bit of zig-zag…

We still expected a bit of tailwind, so the ETE was only about 2:45 hours. The plan was to stay VFR below the TMA and fly between the Paris and Pontoise CTRs, then climb IFR to FL110.

Just as we started our climb: Persan-Beaumont airfield (LFPA).

The next 45 minutes, up to the Belgian border, were mostly above status clouds.

Chaleroi.

As we arrived over Germany, the weather slowly became nicer.

Again, the speed wasn’t half bad…

Fair weather ahead.

However, in the very north of Germany, scattered showers were moving through. Cloud tops were mostly at FL120 and the freezing level was at about 6000 feet. We tried (and managed) to avoid most of the clouds during the descent. I was really keen on that since I knew this kind of cloud can have copious amounts of ice in them. At a certain point during the descent, we just about clipped a cumulus cloud top and were in that cloud for about 1 or two seconds – no more. After that, we had a very slight cover of ice on the wings….wish I had filmed that. Be careful out there! Moments after that, we descended through the freezing level.

Here’s the River Elbe, south of Hamburg.

At the time of our approach into Luebeck, there was a shower right on final for 25, so we flew through it during the ILS. Well, we were actually quite happy to get the salt washed off the airframe.

Anyhow, the runway was in sight well before minimums.

Landing was at about 20h local time. Another great trip had come to an end. The weather hasn’t been the very best, but hey, that’s GA flying.