Howard,
I feel your pain! Been though that before!
Two suggestions for you.
1. While others have correctly mentioned the morning, don’t discount the evening. In my experience things often start to quieten down once the sun starts to lower in the sky. The trouble here is that by the time you realise what’s happening you’re already decided that you’re not getting out today, and so aren’t ready for it! So be ready to go, with a plan, in case things ease off in the early evening. The second problem you often fase with this is airfields closing at 5 or 6pm. But it’s still bright to much later than that. So consider, as part of that planning, what fields you can get into later in the evening.
2. Leave your customs issues until Northern France. With the weather you’re looking at you probably won’t be able to make it in one hop. Instead look to make progress. An hour progress, 2 if you’re lucky, could well leave you on the right side of the weather the next day. So if you see a gap of an hour or two, make some progress closer to home. But don’t expect to make it the whole way. Leave your customs until the Northern France, so that you have maximum flexability to get to Northern France!
Finally, you don’t need to submit the GAR and then wait 4 hours. Your GAR is due 4 hours before arrival in the UK. So if your flight will be 1.5 hours, you only need to submit the GAR 2.5 hours before departure. You’ll still have sumitted it 4 hours before arrival 
Best of luck. Been there done that!
Colm
Howard, I’m slightly further north but the weather the last days was horrible with heavy rain and thunderstorms.
Very unusual to have this kind of WX for so many consecutive days!
A way to get home would be to wait for a “gap” in the weather and plan your route via airports that can be used as alternates.
Being VFR you can avoid the stuff visually. If you approach weather that can’t be circumnavigated, you just return to an airport on your route.
As Peter already said: IR is of little help as you can’t outclimb the weather in a standard GA aircraft. Entering IMC is dangerous without a WX radar on board.
I’ve checked the WX of your routing just now and I think I would also have cancelled today.
Sunday morning looks much better
Make an early start.
You could always do it VFR dodging the T-storms! (Ah… I see Peter already suggested this.)
I did long flights last weekend Budaors LHBS to Portoros LJPZ including over highish terrain just under the cloud base. It was not a straight line. I agree with other posters: start early. And don’t drink a beer when you land mid day—because by late afternoon things start looking quite nice. Just always be ready to divert.
You could always do it VFR dodging the T-storms!
Indeed, and often this works because CB bases are often not very low; typically 1500-2000ft. Some problems however:
I agree, the current weather situation is exceptionally bad for June, though not unheard of. I remember a similar situation a few years back when we had bad weather for almost 2 months in 2013. There are as many theories as there are experts as to why, all of them equally unlikely. One of the theories which seem to have a certain amount of substance to it would suggest that there is a form of monsoon season forming with the movement to the south of the polar low pressure systems due to global warming effects, which provokes cut offs much more often than normal. Cut Offs are low pressure areas which break out of the normal array of lows and go south, passing either north or south of the Alps. They become particularly vicious if they get stuck in the Gulf of Lyon or over Italy, where they can produce a nasty reverse airstream around the alps, which then leads to flooding in Germany and Switzerland almost every time.
At the moment it looks like the rainfall and the associated convective activity might subside a bit next week but it is anything but sure. One of the LR models which worked well to predict the end of the rain/flood period in 2013 sais the concentration of low pressure to subside around Wednsday next week, but it does not correspond to the picture we see on the Cosmo or ECMWF models so far, even though the parameter that model checks does indeed rise by then. The ECMWF shows another cut off however, towards the end of next week, but it is not clear yet where it’s headed.
With this convective garbage we see, flying is possible often, but tricky. You’d need to negotiate your way around the cells, which is practically only possible with real time radar coverage or with real short legs. Looking at the situation, I fully agree that Augsburg – UK today is pretty difficult to achieve, even though there are holes in that massive air mass which reaches from the Gulf of Lyon to the East Sea. Behind that there is a lot of convection overhead France, moving into Belgium right now. It certainly is difficult right now. I’d sit it out or take the airline option, as I don’t really see a “sure” proposition before Monday or Tuesday next week.
OK…so some great advice thank you. I looked at the weather – TAFs, METARs, Weatheronline.co.uk, Skydemon and the Autorouter stuff and thought that flying north to Paderborn (EDLP) (as people have suggested) was work a go! Roland (RXH) kindly offered to give me a lift to Augsburg airport (EDMA) and with some additional weather checking and I routed north and west to Paderborn without a diversion.
En-route weather was only light rain and no turbulence (although it damaged my prop – more below). I heard another chap who was heading west and who turned around and landed at an alternate when the chap on Langan Info told him about thunderstorms at Metz in France. Langan Info were very helpful for me when I asked about weather on my routing “I’ve looked and no storms and it gets better the further north you get.” Just what I wanted to hear. The cloudbase at Paderborn was more than 4,000 feet. An easy approach and landing in almost calm wind. I’m now in the airport hotel at Paderborn – convenient, clean and functional – Basic Plus shall we say. (They give discounts to aircrew – anyone with a pilot’s licence )
…but my prop got damaged – just the stripes which were re-painted at the last Annual in March – I think they are paint and not tape.
- 
Should I be doing anything about this minor prop damage? Does it matter than the paint has been removed? Can I fly on without a repair (I presume so.)
BTW : I’m learning – get fuel when you land!
Next step – plan the flight home from here. Hopefully easier than from Munich / Augsburg
Howard
No problem at all to fly with that. No contact with a hard object, or even a small bird. The prop edge looks clean, too.
Howard wrote:
…but my prop got damaged – just the stripes which were re-painted at the last Annual in March
I think the answer depends on how exactly the damage occurred. In a similar line as in this discussion. Did that happen in the air?
