Best Places To See for Pilots, in Your Home Country

Actually I always thought that the natural beauty of the UK was vastly underrated. Just as a few examples:

• Dorset; not so much the coast, but some inland villages
• Yorkshire Moors & Dales
• the Black Mountains (Hills?) on the England – Welsh border
• the North Devon coast
• most of Scotland, certainly the Highlands

I haven’t flown in the UK in many, many years, but the biggest issue I found was local ground transportation. It’s all very well smiling at the traffic on the M4 from above, but once you get wherever you’re going you’re stuck.

dublinpilot wrote:

If someone was visiting your home country by light aircraft, and was asking you where they should go, what places would you recommend?

Isn’t that very much dependent on the purpose of the flight and the persons flying? Foreigners flying in Norway, usually have a very specific goal. They are flying to the North Cape and/or visiting Lofoten for instance, doing some sight seeing en route. That’s the journey, the “expedition” if you want, and the goals are set. But, if the goal is visiting Norway in a broader sense, then you would have a larger plane, have to carry a bike, like to stay outdoor, hiking, fishing. But, then you need lots of time, unless you have only one or two specific goals again. The difference is you have millions of goals to chose from.

LeSving wrote:

Isn’t that very much dependent on the purpose of the flight and the persons flying? Foreigners flying in Norway, usually have a very specific goal. They are flying to the North Cape and/or visiting Lofoten for instance, doing some sight seeing en route. That’s the journey, the “expedition” if you want, and the goals are set. But, if the goal is visiting Norway in a broader sense, then you would have a larger plane, have to carry a bike, like to stay outdoor, hiking, fishing. But, then you need lots of time, unless you have only one or two specific goals again. The difference is you have millions of goals to chose from.

As someone who is eager to visit Norway via plane soon, and have all of those goals as future aspirations, I would love to see a selection of them. Maybe “this airport is great if you want to sight see” or “this airport is great if you want easy access to great camping and hiking” a couple different suggestions based around different goals would be highly appreciated. Takk!

It depends a lot on whether you are talking about places to see from the air, or places to see from the ground which you can fly to.

For example the northern half of France has very little to see from the air if you are at FL100. Just fields as far as the eye can see, with the occassional small town or village The west coast is by far the most interesting. On the ground there is of course vastly more, and no doubt also if you fly around at 1000ft.

Similarly the UK doesn’t have a lot to see from the air. It isn’t Switzerland… The best are

• Scotland, which has a huge amount of scenery
• Snowdonia (in Wales) is wonderful to overfly at say 4000ft
• the West Country (the bottom left bit of England) is great especially if you can see both north and south coasts at the same time
• the Scilly Isles are really special
• the Channel Islands (not formally UK) are nice, especially Alderney

Here are a few samples:

Scotland:

Trip writeup:
http://peter2000.co.uk/aviation/scotland-2016/index.html

Snowdonia:

Scilly Isles:
http://peter2000.co.uk/aviation/scilly/index.html

Alderney:
http://peter2000.co.uk/aviation/alderney/index.html

Well. In Switzerland I’d have to vote for the Alps.

Matterhorn

Aletschglacier

Churfirsten

Saentis

Great Mythen, Schwyz

Alpstein, Saentis and Schafberg

As for airfields, my favorite ones:

Wangen Lachen LSPV

Bressaucourt LSZQ

Lausanne LSGL

Altenrhein LSZR

Neuchatel LSGN

Langenthal LSPL

Triengen LSPN

And my homebase Zurich, LSZH.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Well. In Switzerland I’d have to vote for the Alps

Thanks Mooney_Driver for the pictures, Switzerland gets the “best flying views” vote

Peculiarproductions wrote:

this airport is great if you want easy access to great camping and hiking

The Meråker airfield (ENMO) has some cabins you can rent, it’s in the mountains close to the Swedish border, next to a lake and a river. And the grass is maintained by a nice group of workers:

Which, by the way, means that you need to be cautious before landing, and low pass can be a good idea.

In terms of things to see from the air, apart, of course, from Lofoten and North Cape, I would recommend the Geiranger fjord. It is possible to follow the whole fjord, and it’s beautiful. Here is the village of Geiranger from the air at the end of the fjord or beginning, which ever way you want to look at it :-)

Another airport which can be of interest is Røros, it’s quite close to the city which is small but very nice (it is a UNESCO site or something like that). I once flew there and did a touch and go facing south, during the initial climb I had a perfect view on the city center.

And I would say the Norwegian coast in general is really nice to see from airplane.

Ibra wrote:

Switzerland gets the “best flying views” vote

Dang, I had not realized that there was such a vote going on! Norway would probably com quite close, I would say :-)

If it‘s about scenery alone, yes, Norway will win it. Scotland is a close second, but not quite a ls spectacular. Scotland has more isolated island airfields than Norway though.

Switzerland is also very nice, bit lacks one important thing: the sea. Plus it‘s too small.

WingsWaterAndWheels wrote:

Dang, I had not realized that there was such a vote going on! Norway would probably com quite close

We had that debate before? conclusion was: the two countries are the same just matter of where sea level does cuts through now and way in the past and yes way smaller as per boscomantico remark, but that really depends how high & fast you fly