Scuppered!

The problem with Wales is that it is full of mountains……

… and with mountains, comes weather!

Welcome news came in the form of the weather forecast, signalling an end to the torrential rain with calmer, high-pressure conditions to come.  It was the opportunity we’d been waiting for to go for a highly-recommended flight to Haverfordwest. 

Sunday came and we duly set off for the airport.  Will had planned the route and completed the out-of-hours indemnity form, a necessity due to the airfield being closed at the weekends (ie without services such as air traffic control).  By 11.45 we were taxiing off down the runway and within minutes, had climbed to 2000ft, passed the local village and able to turn onto our route. 

It wasn’t long before we saw the Welsh mountains appearing in the distance. We also noticed the layer of cloud which seemed to be covering most of Wales.  That wasn’t in the plan!  Keeping to the valleys and diverting to Abergavenny kept us going for a bit longer but as we changed heading to get back en-route, our improbable hopes that the clouds might have dissipated somewhat, were dashed.  Nothing had changed and the cloud was stubbornly not going anywhere. 

Ahead of us were the peaks of the Brecon Beacons, mostly hidden behind a screen of white with Pen-y-Fan’s summit (2,900ft) encircled by mist. 

We had hoped to fly at an altitude of 4,500ft; the minimum safe altitude to fly over the tops was 3,500ft.  By sticking to the low ground, we’d managed to skirt under the cloud at 2,600ft so it was a definite no-go for the flightpath ahead of us.

We had no choice but to turn back, up to Abergavenny again and through the valleys in a reverse of what we’d just done.  We weren’t the only ones – through our headsets we could hear a pilot reporting in that he was aborting his flight to Haverfordwest due to the low cloud base, and returning to Kemble. 

Rather than heading straight back to the airport, we decided to divert towards Ledbury and Great Malvern.  We’d already seen evidence of the flooding, but seeing the burst banks of the River Severn showed more of the devastating effects of Storm Henk. 

Back at the hangar we got talking to another couple who’d just returned from a successful trip to Blackbushe.  Had we decided to go east rather than west, we discovered, we’d have had no clouds to contend with and certainly no mountains to fly over.  Despite that, we had a brilliant day, rounded off by bagging the last table in the busy airport restaurant for the best Sunday roast for miles.