Andreas to Glenswinton

So there’s quite a lot of posts about epic trips across Europe, spanning about 89 countries in one go, so I thought I’d contribute a trip report for something really short – only 40NM each way… Since I have an FAA ticket, it doesn’t even count as a cross country (needs to be at least 50nm in a straight line for that). Also no one seems to head north. I think they’re missing out.

Even so, there’s a lot packed into that 40nm. Plains, an overwater crossing, mountains, challenging winds and challenging sheep.

Since the Lancashire Landing was cancelled, I had nowhere planned. I had always been thinking of going to Jacko’s airstrip (Glenswinton) which looked interesting, and it wasn’t too far away.

The weather was reasonable, scattered at about 2000’ and breaking up more (and would have been a reasonable soaring day as the cloudbase went up), but during the morning it could obscure some of the higher ground.

Glenswinton itself is a one way airfield, landings on 03 takeoffs on 21. It slopes uphill (average 3%) on 03, and there’s rising terrain off the other end. There’s a fairly steep bit of runway towards the end which means with something like the Auster, even if you landed midfield, getting stopped before the end wouldn’t be much drama as the uphill part would take a lot of speed away. Still, it’s best to try to land near the threshold :-) Especially given there was a quartering tailwind.

This is from the north of the airfield, looking south. If you look really carefully, there are some white dots near the threshold of 03. Those white dots are a flock of sheep.

Of course, the sheep chose to amble out when I was on short final. With the tree covered rising terrain off the end of 03, you have to commit early to a go-around. In hindsight, it would have been better to do a faster, flaps up sheep-clearing low pass rather than trying to make a landing on the first attempt, because the inevitable go-around as the sheep looked like they were going to wander out meant I had to do a fairly slow and careful (Vx) climbing turn to avoid the high ground. It would have been a lot easier to do flaps up from a 70 or 80 mph pass. The quartering tailwind certainly didn’t help the climb angle. Anyway, the sheep got the message and ambled away so I could land on the second attempt…

I managed to tag along for a trip into Castle Douglas for the end of their Civic Week and see a little bit of the nearest town (about 20 minutes away by car). Castle Douglas is a small agricultural town, but it does boast a library…with a palm tree! (Trachycarpus fortunei, windmill palm).

The lake. You can’t hear the bagpipe band that was behind us. (I’m not joking! There really was a bagpipe band)

Some other random bits of architecture: the arts centre, clock tower and bustling high street of Castle Douglas:

The clouds had broken up quite a bit for my departure, and it had turned into excellent flying conditions – light winds and warm sunshine.

Ready for departure, with the downslope the Auster is easily off in around 100m or so!

A mile or so away after takeoff

Crossing Wigton Bay prior to coasting out at Burrow Head