Jim and David flew from UK to Greece (Foto: From David Goode)

My passenger for the flight was Jim, a friend of many years who accompanied me to Spain in a flex-wing two years ago, so I knew we would make a good team. We had talked about the flight in principle for the best part of a year, but didn't actually start buying charts and making phone calls until two weeks before we left. The most important one was to Kerkira international airport on Corfu. The controller there sounded very friendly and said they had no problem accepting a microlight, but we must have a transponder to fly anywhere in Greece. That started a bit of a panic as I would now have to buy and install a transponder in a hurry. 

We set off from Enstone at 0800 (first allowable take off) on Sunday 20th June. It sounds like we got out of the UK just in time because when I called home from sunny Calais, it was raining hard in Oxford. There was hardly anyone around at Calais, but we managed to get some fuel and breakfast. 

Next stop was St Florentin, a little skydiving and gliding place to the South East of Paris. We'd decided to communicate with whover we were passed to along the way and this worked out fine apart from the odd patch where the icom didn't have the range. It was my first time flying with a transponder and I must admit it was a relief not to have to respond to their squawk request with a 'negative squawk', as I'd been used to. 

There's no restaurant at St Florentin, but we arrived just as someone’s birthday party was ending and they generously allowed us to eat from the plentiful leftovers. We stayed for a couple of hours watching the skydivers make their dangerous low hook-turns to give themselves sufficient airspeed for cool 'surf the turf' landings. 

I had planned for each leg to be about two hours. It was meant to be a holiday after all. Our next leg took us to Roman St Paul. A GA and microlight strip at the edge of the French Alps. The plan was that if the weather was perfect in the morning, we would go over and if not, we would go around via the South of France coast. The latter was looking more likely that evening as there was a blustery wind blowing. We'd suffered some horrendous 'oh my God, we're going to die!' turbulence crossing a minor corner of the Pyrenes two years earlier, so we both have a healthy respect for mountains. We bumped into a friendly bunch of microlight pilots who gave us fuel from their cans. (the pumps and the airfield office were already closed for the evening) I got to use a great little siphon device that they called a 'wanker' due to the motion needed to get it started. Another reason for choosing Roman as a stopover was that there is a camp site right at the edge of the airfield. After we'd had a beer at the camp site bar, we pitched our tent and walked into the local town for some food. Unfortunately it turned out to be about three miles so we were grateful for a taxi ride back!

The next morning I was up before sunrise and checking the wind and cloud cover. None of either! I had been feeling nervous and excited about the idea of crossing the Alps. Having written the idea off the previous night, I had already filed a flight plan for the coastal route (through my trusty fax operator back home, AKA, Jo, my wife). We both agreed that conditions could not be more perfect and that we should take the high road! Thankfully, we were able to file an airborne flight plan for the direct route and minutes later we were in the mountains and climbing as fast as we could! At one point we were at 11,000 feet and there was still terrain at the same level! The air however was perfectly smooth all the way and the engine purred along without missing a beat. We landed at Spezza in Northern Italy before 8 am. We were both elated to have done that flight, but both agreed that now we had done it, we didn't feel any need to do it again! 

Spezza is a great little microlight site with a restaurant, fuel pumps and friendly staff who seemed very pleased to see us. We spent a couple of hours there before setting off on the next leg. The first mistake we made here was that we didn't file a flight plan. It soon became apparent that you get better treatment by Italian ATC if you file a plan. There had been storms the previous day, and now it was hot and sunny. The moisture in the air soon made the vis pretty poor. What better time for the GPS to report 'No fix possible'! Geoff Weighell at Enstone had told us that he had lost GPS coverage a few times on his trip to Italy the previous year but it still came as a complete surprise to me. I have to admit that I do rely on my GPS a lot. I know one is not supposed to, but it's difficult not to on a long trip. We decided that we would follow the river all the way to the coast. This would make the leg a bit longer but it would take all the stress out of navigating in fairly featureless terrain in poor visibility. The GPS started working again soon after, but I now viewed it with suspicion! Throughout Italy it would go down about three or four times on every flight for about five minutes.

Our next stop was a small airfield called Val di Chienti. I had spoken to the owner on the phone, but he didn't speak any English, and I was trying to use an internet translator site to ask for permission to land and whether I could get fuel. Clearly I had cocked up because when we arrived at the short strip (with high trees on the approach!), the place was deserted and fuel pumps locked. We sat on the grass for a while. Jim fell asleep and I made some calls to see where we could get fuel. Pescara international airport seemed our best bet so off we went. 

All went well at Pescara at first. Cleared to enter their controlled airspace. Permission to land. Taxi to the apron. Then some eagle eyed controller in the tower uttered the fateful words...'G-CCNG are you an ultralight?'. The great thing about the CT is that most of the time nobody is aware that it's a microlight, which as we all know, can be quite convenient. The problem in Italy is that Microlights are not allowed in controlled airspace and now the only way for us to leave Pescara would be to take off into theirs! Italy has a huge swathe of controlled airspace which spans the whole country making it impossible to travel the length of the country without flying in controlled airspace. We spent the next few hours trying to obtain special authorisation so that we could leave. We visited four different offices and spoke to many officials. The most helpful of whom was a police helicopter pilot who had a map of all the ultralight sites on his wall. He took it down and photocopied it bit by bit for us, including all the phone numbers and co-ordinates. Now that the cat was out of the bag, we figured we would have to behave like a microlight and use these little strips instead of the nice big ones with the handy fuel pumps and restaurants. 

With our special authorisation finally granted and some more fuel on board, we set off for a site considerably further south. We would still ask permission to transit the big area of controlled airspace around Amendola because the alternative would be to fly low and out to sea some considerable distance. The problem now was that we were running out of daylight and it soon became obvious that we would not make it to our destination before dark. After a bit of a debate we decided to turn back to one of the microlight sites marked on the photocopied maps called Termoli. Thankfully we were able to plug the co-ordinates into the GPS and found it without any problem. Landing was a different issue....My home base is the mile of tarmac at Enstone. Consequently I have not had much practice at short field landings! There was a light crosswind blowing as I turned final for the 300m strip with a telephone wire at the threshold. Matters were not helped by Jim telling me about possible hotels and restaurants he could see from here. Okay, so I snapped a little at this point! We stayed in a hotel and watched England play. 

Up early again the next day with a plan to fly to another of the many microlight sites on our new maps instead of Bari which was on our original plan. We couldn't get any response from Amendola so we decided to fly the marked VFR route which is there to get VFR traffic to and from a civilian aerodrome right in the middle of their airspace. We landed at a place called Torito, mainly because we had spotted that there was a petrol station not too far away. As we all know, distances look shorter from the air and the petrol station was in fact three miles walk! There was no road to the strip, just tractor tracks. Once again the airfield was deserted, so we unpacked the fuel can and some water and set off through the olive groves. The walk there with the empty can was lovely. The walk back with the full one (twice) was not such fun!

But this was it! The last leg! We filed our plan (using the home base dictation method again). Phoned to check that it was approved by Brindisi and then we were off! An hour and a half later we were landing in Corfu and feeling extremely pleased with ourselves! 

After a day and a half of holiday, we raced back in two days. Setting off from Kerkira at first light and doing the whole length of Italy and the South of France in one day. Ironically, with a flight plan and phone call for authorisation, we were allowed to land and take off from Pescara this time without any hassle. Going around Nice is interesting as they make you use the helicopter route, miles out to sea below 500 feet with helicopters coming the other way!

We passed over Spamfield on Friday evening. Sorry we didn't stop but we had read the weather reports for the next day, so were keen to make use of this little window in the crap UK weather to get home.

At the moment I'm thinking that the trip has topped it for me and that I won't want to go any further than Greece...but who knows!?


David Goode