Southern European Tour

8 days (10 July to 18 July)

3363 miles round trip from London to Gibraltar and back

Grand Tour over the Pyrennes, along the Spanish coast, over Gibraltar, to Portugal, back into Spain; along the French Atlantic coast; over the English Channel to London.

Companeros, mas rapido!

“C’mon Jim, lets get going faster”, I said, “it’s going to be dark soon and we don’t have a landing light”.

Now Jim had not really flown the CT before at more than a leisurely 85 to 90 knots and he was reluctant to be wound up after such a leisurely lunch and pleasant walk on the beach on the Orange Blossom Coast of Eastern Spain or the Costa del Azahar as our friends call it.

We were on our way to Vera airstrip to make our second overnight campamento on this microlight tour from London to Gibraltar and back.

“Why don’t you fly it D” Jim replied in his calm jokey voice developed from his “Auf wiedersehen Pet” days.

I had been sitting on my hands for most of the flying and quickly grabbed the stick and throttle and gunned it. We descended, built up the speed to 125 knots and called the other 4 microlights in the gaggle behind us to hurry up as the light was fading fast. Landing at twilight is not easy, add the complication of no runway lights, no radio on the ground and the possibility of being locked out of our pre-booked rooms due to tardy arrival was not very attractive a proposition.

We skimmed low over the ridges to maintain the speed and in exchange of losing height to gain speed; our ability to see further was reduced. However the trusty AvMap GPS was leading us directly to the 700 meter tarmac strip at the microlight club............