Trip to England, Scotland and The Netherlands

DAY 2

The next morning, I treated myself to the ever so wonderful breakfast at the hotel and started making my plans for the day.

The weather looked very good for all of Scotland. Unfortunately though, I had made a little mistake in that I had totally forgotten to make any arrangements for that day during the day before. It is very important to do this when touring the British Isles because a) one might have to send a 12h/24h GAR in certain cases, and b) one sometimes needs to get airfield PPRs ahead of time (it is often not possible to get PPR early in the morning at many airfields, due to their reduced opening hours, convoluted process, etc.). So: always plan ahead by one day (even if the British weather often makes that difficult… it’s better to have too many PPRs than too few…).

The vague plan, made the day before, was to fly up to the Isle of Skye. The airfield there (Broadford, EGEI) is operated by the local council though, and I didn’t yet have any PPR. Luckily, it was a Tuesday, so all hope wasn’t yet lost. At 8:45 I fired off an email to them (that’s what they want nowadays), and sure enough, at 9:00, a reply came in, giving me their OK! Phew!

The other thing that I hadn’t pre-planned was transportation on the island. Skye is huge. Hence, it’s impossible, or at least very impractical, to get around just by taxi. Rental cars are scarce, and in the beginning of August (peak of high season), none are available at short notice. But I still wanted to see Skye. So I decided to just go there, and see what would happen.

It’s only about 45 miles due north from Glenforsa to the Isle of Skye:

Aircraft: OK. Airfield: OK. Weather: OK. Let’s go!

On departure fo Glenforsa, the wind was totally calm, so I chose runway 07 this time, as the departure sector is totally clear in that takeoff direction. The runway, again, was very smooth. A little bit soft all the same, but still, very well kept and a joy to land on and take off from. I ended up using about half of the 750 meter runway (fuel just under half full).

Beautiful Tobermory…

In the distance, the Isle of Skye…

This is Broadford airfield (sometimes also referred to as “Ashaig”).

The runway is in much better shape than it appears. But, a small tip (copied from Skydemon, such a valuable resource, btw): for parking, there are two adjacent aprons there, both connected to each other, and both with a short taxiway leading towards the runway, One is painted with white lines, the other is not. The “painted” one is for ambulance aircraft only. All the other users have to park on the “other” one. But: right at the entrance to the “other” apron, there is a nasty pothole on the taxiway, which might really ruin your day. So: always exit the runway towards the “painted” apron only, then park on the other apron.

Given the brilliant light, is was time for a couple more aircraft photos:

I gave it one last shot and once again called the local care hire / taxi company. Nope. They wouldn’t even be able to send over a taxi. I walked up the airport entrance road to the main road and called up one more taxi driver, based in the village of Broadford, about 3 miles away (“A2B Taxis”, Tel. 07919957456). Lucky me, he had time to take me to Broadford, where I would be able to catch one of the regular buses up to Portree, the main town on the Isle of Skye.

Well, this bus ride, from Broadford to Portree, turned out to be breathtaking, scenery-wise, and thus worth the ride to Portree alone! Some pics from Broadford and a few more taken from the bus (would you have noticed?)…

Portree is nice, but quite overcrowded by tourists in August. I had some lunch (mussels, again!) and then pretty much took the next bus back to Broadford. Next time, I would like to have a couple of days of time, in order to really explore the beauty of that island. Preferably in May, June or September, though.

During the bus ride, I also planned my next stop. The idea was to spend the next night on the east coast of Scotland. Close to Inverness, at Dingwall, there is an airstrip that belongs to the owner of a guesthouse (which however, isn’t located right by the runway, but just under a mile away). It’s called Knockbain Farm, and you can find it on Skydemon. It’s nowhere near as nice as Glenforsa, but I thought it would be cool to spend the night there, or at least check out the place. On the telephone, the owner (David) was very friendly, but he was also very much keen on pointing out the challenges of the strip and the fact that all users have to send him an email by which they declare to be understanding these risks. That was OK for me.

However, the day was just too nice and I thought that if I went straight to Knockbain Farm, I would arrive there too early form my taste, thus ending they day too soon. I had also always wanted to land at Glendoe airfield, which was right on my way. It’s located on the southern end of Loch Ness, near Fort Augustus. Antonio (of this parish) had recently reported that he had been there (albeit by car), that the owner was welcoming and that the 750 metre strip was in good condition. So I rang up the owner and sure enough, he cheerfully invited me to land. So that was sorted. It would only take me about 15 minutes from Broadford to Glendoe, straight across the mountains. But the weather was really good, so no worries at all.

Look at these colours just after takeoff from Broadford…

Flying past beautiful Plockton aerodrome (I visited it in 2008).

Plockton village.

Enroute.

Approaching the Great Glen, Loch Ness and Fort Augustus from the southwest.

Here you can nicely see Fort Augustus to the left and Glendoe airstrip more or less in the centre of the photo. Gorgeous, innit? The strip slopes down towards the loch, so I landed the other way, uphill, on runway 22.

With a low wing aircraft, one really has to land on the (unmarked) centreline of the runway, since it is fenced on all four sides. Challenging. During landing, but also upon taxying back to the threshold (for parking), I noticed that the runway, whilst well kept, was SOFT; at least for an SR22 with it’s rather small, rather high-pressure tyres and those low ground clearance wheel fairings. Anyway, I parked up and took some shots of this absoutely great place for an airstrip.

The original plan had been to stroll down to Fort Augustus for an ice cream or so, but to be honest, with that soft grass (and some tailwind on the downhill runway 04), I just didn’t have the piece of mind to do that. So after a few minutes of taking in the beautiful place, I decided to head straight out again, towards Knockbain Farm (just barely visibile on the previous Skydemon map shot). I started up, taxied uphill to the very end of runway 04 and took off. In the end, despite some heavy drag from the tyres and wheel fairlings ploughing in the soft soil, the 310 horsepowers did their job and got me airborne after about 350 meters.

I flew across Loch Ness…

… and just minutes later, arrived overhead Knockbain Farm airstrip. I could clearly see what the owner had been talking about… the runway, while at least 650 meters long, was severely hump-backed. This shot is the best I can show you (the runway markers can be seen on the left if the photo):

Here is an old video of a touch and go on this runway, courtesy of Moaraigh, also of this parish:

On my first low approach, I thought that the runway, at least the part of it which was properly mown, was rather narrow. I opted for another (very) low approach over runway 26 and also noted that it wasn’t anywhere near as well kept as the one at Glenforsa. So I said to myself “well, I’d say I have had my challenges for the day”, and opted to give it a pass (literally!). After all, Inverness airport (EGPE) was only a few minutes away, had a nice long and hard runway, Avgas (for which I would have eventually had to land there anyway) and a supposedly pleasant city (with good bus links) for the night.

Of course, at that point, I didn’t have PPR for Inverness, so I called Approach, told them it was a diversion (which it was, after all ) and asked them to kindly let Highland Aviation (the local flying school that handles all small GA there) know about my coming in, err, 3 minutes. That turned out to be not a problem at all!

On my (very short) way there, the weather was still great…

… however, just I entered their ATZ, a shower had positioned itself right over the airfield. But again, it didn’t really pose any problem to my immediate landing. The runway was really flooded though, giving me a little bit of planing action after touchdown…

Here is the track flown:

Once parked, I waited out the downpour before opening the cabin door. But sure enough, 10 minutes later (as the old Scottish saying goes…) it was all over, and gave way to that irresistible northern sunlight…

The experience at Highland Aviation was really good, too. Very friendly staff, no hassles and Avgas at an acceptable price, at least by Scottish standards (2.03 GPB/l). They even waived all the fees for me, as I was a diversion (normally, including parking, it would have been just shy of 50 GBP).

I took the bus to the city centre of Inverness (it’s only a four minute walk over from Highland Aviation’s premises to the bus stop at the airline terminal). In the meantime, I booked a hotel in the centre of Inverness. Despite many of them still having vacancies, prices were sky high. It booked one of the cheapest (but still very expensive) ones and guess what? It turned out to be junk…

Anyway, the city is pleasant for a couple of hours of walking in the evening sunshine…

Time for more Scottish beer and Scottish mussles…

Stay tuned…