How do you check it for potholes?
Good point. You can’t. You can’t be sure of seeing them on a low pass, and a trial run with the main wheels might miss a hole or a stone in long grass, or a bit of old fence wire by just a few inches.
So if you haven’t inspected the surface on foot, you can only see that it will “probably” be OK. Which is another way of saying that it might not be OK.
To make sure, you need large diameter tyres with 8-10 psi. Then it doesn’t matter if you missed a badger hole or if the rocks are bigger than they looked. They always are.
How about Locher Airfield, just north of Bolzano?
Seems to be the Privat Strip of Mr. Locher (he sure has one of the nicest PC-12s flying around)
Wow. Lots more possibilities than I realised.
The French ones look interesting, but needing a mountain rating is an issue. Of course it can be done, but from what I read, it need to be renewed every two years, or two mountain airport landings within that period. A big possibility of getting the rating and losing it again two years later. I looked at some videos of some on youtube. They didn’t look too challenging for a novice, and I don’t have access to a suitable aircraft for more challenging ones.
The Scandinavian on in Fly310’s video looks lovely 
Off to google the Spanish terms suggested by Jan!
Thanks guys. Some interesting results!
For Spain I can report that I tried to go to such a ‘forestal’ strip. I called the number and learned “it is the airport of the boss” and was given another number from people maintaining his airplane. From them I learned that this 1500m asphalt strip is absolutely private and not to be landed at without permission. I never learned any names and was told “I don’t have permission to disclose anything but that phone number” which was the number of the airplane operator.
There seems to be a lot of who knows whom and for the rest you stick to the official AENA airport or fly UL and go to UL fields known in the scene.
Some info on the Spanish runways is here and here – the latter is from my trip to Salamanca in 2014.
I am not surprised at your report, Stephan, reading the above.
In Spain there are several airfields in hunting grounds which are strictly private and only the hunts participants are allowed to land.
The ‘pistas forestales’ are, legally, only to be used by firefighting airplanes/helis.
But there are a lot of beautiful strips where it is completely legal to land. This weekend I stayed in Luchon (LFCB) with another 11 aircrafts, which by the way is another spectacular airfield, and when returning to Madrid we made a little stop in this airfield, called Coscojuela, located in the little peninsula that can be seen in the middle of the image:
@Coolhand: yes, Luchon is nice, though I wouldn’t think of going there in March. Snow?
But please, share more details of this Spanish airfield on the photo. Looks great!
@Bosco: some info at http://www.aterriza.org/coscojuela-de-sobrarbe/ Or to see it on a map: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/42.3487/0.1861
@Coolhand: apologies for answering in your place. Do you consider the above source more or less reliable?
For Spain a great resource is the book ‘Campos Eventuales’, available from Bucker Books in Madrid Quatro Vientos.
An airstrip in the mountains or forests, that is well removed from civilisation? Somewhere that you can land, with nobody around for miles, and hike off into the woods, and set up camp for the night?
I’ve landed on roads up in the mountains in Northern Ireland and a few very remote places off airport on the West Coast which were miles from the nearest houses. Generally where you have an airstrip you will have an owner, hence people nearby. In Scotland you have some very remote airstrips where the owners may only call to occasionally. I had done a lot of desktop research on Scottish strips, with a view to making a book. I have visited some and a few off airport places there. Its a lot more remote than Ireland.
