Being on schedule + Short flight = Longer lunch

According to the forecast a day or so before our planned flight, the weather, yet again, seemed to be conspiring against us. However, we woke up to a lovely sunny day which seemed to improve the further south you got. Luckily we’d planned to go south!

It seemed daft to drive an hour north for a 30 minute flight south as it would have taken about the same time if we’d just got in the car and headed straight there from home. But of course, the whole point was the flight itself; meeting Will’s parents for lunch was the added bonus. And unlike our last attempt, we actually got there in plenty of time and had a good couple of hours with them before heading back.

Since our flight to Popham, Will’s parents had moved house so the flight this time was to Henstridge Airfield in Somerset. Visibility en-route was perfect with a cloud base of 4,700 ft, and our route skirted Bristol Airport before going over the former RAF Hullavington (now a technology campus for Dyson UK) and past Chavenage House (otherwise known as Poldark’s home of ‘Trenwith’).

When we reached Henstridge, Will decided to take the opportunity for a touch-and-go. That was a first for me. We were then second in the queue for the landing and ended up going about 10 miles wide over Compton Abbas to follow the first plane in.

Henstridge Airfield is privately owned so of course, up to a point, they can make their own rules, but I found the list of rules regarding Covid precautions a little strict when most places were becoming more relaxed.

Again due to Covid restrictions, the cafe was limited to hot drinks from a self-service machine and some ready-plated cakes for sale. Fortunately we’d booked lunch at a local pub otherwise I would have been really disappointed.

The museum was closed too, although we were excited to hear a warning over the radio to “look out for the Tiger Moth to the right of the runway.” The Tiger Moth had attracted a small crowd and we were lucky enough to see it take off and do a few circuits.

Lunch was at The Virginia Ash, just 5 minutes drive from the airfield. It was our waitress’s first day there but she made a cracking job of it and we had a lovely couple of hours enjoying our Sunday Roast and putting the world to rights. It would have been nice to have had a glass of wine to go with it but that, of course, had to wait until we got home.

It had started to drizzle when we came out of the pub so we decided to head straight back to the airfield and set off for home. As we were saying our goodbyes, the guy in charge came out and advised us that the weather was coming in and that we should go – we weren’t sure if he just wanted to get rid of us so he could go home, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was being helpful!

As we headed north, the weather deteriorated and we had to fly back at a lower altitude, at some points looking for holes in the clouds which we could fly through.

By the time we pulled up at home, it was dark, it was rainy and it was definitely not flying weather. The Henstridge man had been spot-on!