Shobdon Airfield started as Pembridge Landing Ground, a long strip in an isolated area used to support Army manoeuvres. In 1942 it was upgraded to “a proper airfield” by the military.

Shaun McGuire has made a website dedicated to the Hereford Parachute Club at Shobdon and has reprinted an article found in Action Stations 3, The Airfields which tells the history of the airfield:

The first visitor after the new airfield opened on May 28, 1942 was a Grumman Martlet which forced-landed whilst on a flight from Yeovilton to Donibristle on June 20. A few days later two Canadian Spitfires landed after getting lost on a cross-country flight. On July 14 the first aircraft to be based – a Lysander – was delivered by an ATA pilot, followed by two dismantled Hotspur gliders brought by road.

I was flying to Shobdon on a whim. Its location on the border of England and Wales meant I was likely to get some lovely views and the attached café had a good reputation. At the time, I didn’t think to look at the history of the airfield, or else I might have seen this:

Shobdon’s grass surfaces on which the gliders usually landed were muddy and unserviceable and half the runway width was unusable because of re-surfacing work.

I was blissfully unaware that the airfield had a reputation for mud when I planned a day trip to Shobdon and back, I was just pleased I could conveniently get my three take-offs and landings in a single afternoon.

Shobdon has a hard runway, over 2,700 feet of asphalt, so I wasn’t particularly interested in the state of their grass. I felt much more prepared than I usually was, as I’d met someone at my local flying club who knew the airfield well.

“Keep a good look out,” he told me. “You get the fighter jets over-flying the place without bothering to talk to anyone. Check the noise abatement procedure, it’s a wide circuit there. And always, always watch the other planes: they have two overhead join procedures: one for locals and one for people who know what an overhead join is.”

He also told me that air-to-ground was “intermittent” so I wasn’t concerned at the radio silence when I approached the airfield later that afternoon. It was quiet, no other planes in the air and no sign of military activity. I landed without any excitement and head over to the clubhouse to get some lunch.

It seemed a nice enough place – the café was tidy and the people were friendly. I got lost looking for the restrooms and ended up in room at the back which seemed the epitome of a Victorian gentlemen’s lounge: wood panelled walls, dark green furniture, varnished tables with crystal ashtrays large enough to hold a cigar or two. I felt quite guilty being in there, an intruder in a masculine world that I’d only ever read about. I backed out nervously before anyone caught me touching the velvet curtains.

A friendly woman in a small wooden cubicle accepted my landing fee and commented what a lovely day it had been and how lucky I was. The week before had been miserable, she told me, non-stop rain. I chatted to her for a bit and then made my way back to the plane.

It was lunchtime and the café had just begun to fill. I’d seen a table full of old airmen, no doubt telling tall tales of the type I love to hear – but I needed to get back home. I settled for a quick cup of coffee at the table next to them. One day I will learn to appreciate tea – after all these years in the UK, you’d think I’d have acquired a taste for it.

I rushed back onto the apron and started up the plane. There was still no one on the radio so I did my calls blind. I was meandering along the taxi-way when I belatedly noticed the sign: “No power checks beyond this point!” I looked around. No other planes were moving. I turned the plane hard to the right so that it was somewhat vaguely into wind and started my checks on the spot.

When I went to turn back onto the taxiway I realised I hadn’t left myself any room to make the turn, I was going to have to enter the grass runway which ran alongside the taxiway. But in that case, I thought, why not just cross the grass and head directly to the asphalt. The radio was silent, no one was coming in, it wasn’t like I was going to be causing any inconvenience.

I made the call and pulled onto the grass. The plane bumped forward and then slowed to a crawl over the uneven ground, losing momentum. I pushed in the throttle but it seemed I was too slow, the plane stopped moving. I increased the power again and then once more. It took a moment before it sank in: I was at full throttle and the plane wasn’t moving. I bit my lip, shut down the engine and clambered out of the plane.

There was no denying it, I was stuck. There was a 3-foot long furrow in the mud. I closed my eyes, I could almost hear the swearing of the future gliders landing on that runway.

At the end of the rut was my nose wheel, covered in mud and dug into the grass. The propeller had bright green streaks all around the edges. If I’d managed to go any deeper, I would have probably taken out the prop but luckily, no damage was done. Except that I needed to get the plane off of the grass somehow.

Help appeared rather rapidly, a plane shutting down perpendicular to the taxiway and runways has that effect. A friendly, sturdy looking guy came out from wherever he had been working to see what had happened.

“The grass runway isn’t usable after the weather we’ve had,” one said, looking at the plane. “It’s a bit muddy out there.” Yeah, I’d noticed. I showed him the nose wheel and he grimaced. Others arrived and a moment later there were four of them in a circle around the Saratoga, shaking their heads at the mess I’d gotten myself into. I stayed on the periphery, they looked like they’d spent their life around planes and were probably taking them to pieces while I was still hoping I’d grow tall enough to be a stewardess. I didn’t think they’d appreciate my input and I didn’t have a chance of getting the plane out without them.

“She’s stuck, all right.”
“If she used full power, couldn’t she…”
“No way, look how close her prop is to the ground already.”

I couldn’t help nodding furiously in agreement every time someone vetoed the “full power and press on” theory.

“Can we push her?” They circled around the plane. I was pretty sure that the female pronoun referred to the plane, not me. I checked to make sure no one was shoving a part of the plane that shouldn’t be shoved, then positioned myself at the nose to heave on the count of three.

The Saratoga rocked backwards and then hit the side of the ridge and lurched forwards again, comfortable in its rut. We could push it out, if we could follow the muddy crevasse I’d created exactly. As it was, we weren’t creating the momentum to push the nose wheel out and over the rut. Even with six of us, it was not enough.

One of the men looked as if he might mention the full power theory again but my new friend who had taken charge spoke first. “We’re going to have to tow her out.”

I didn’t have a clue what this would entail and how this would work. In the end, I simply admitted my helplessness. “I guess I’m not much help.” I got a tolerant smile as a response. I took a chance. “Would it be OK if I took a few photographs of you pulling the plane out?

Luckily they were a friendly bunch; they grinned at me, happy to be captured on film as they rescued this damsel in distress. A battered Landrover was quickly sourced to tug the plane out backwards. They affixed the rope to what we all thought was a tow point on the back of the plane. I later discovered the handy loop was actually for tying the plane down – to my dismay I discovered that the handbook specifically warns against using it to tow. It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t know this while the men positioned themselves: one at the nose of the plane, one at each wing, one in the Landrover and one to stand with the rope. On the count of three, the men shoved, the driver revved carefully and the Saratoga shuddered gently before majestically lifting up and over the rut and then rolling smoothly back to the taxiway. The Landrover towed her back to the sign: “No power checks beyond this point!”

From there it was easy. I thanked them all profusely and did a quick walk-around. Everything looked fine, even the tie-down point. I got into my plane and flew back home, impressed at how friendly everyone had been. I made a mental note to come back to Shobdon … in the summer, after it’s had a chance to dry out.

This three-part story was originally published in the November 2007 issue of Piper Flyer magazine.

Part One: If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother
Part Two: Sylvia’s Mother Said

After spending over two hours filling out paperwork at the Rome Urbe airfield, I asked the one friendly person in the place for details about getting fuel for the plane. He looked at the clock. “It is Sunday,” he said. “They will leave at noon.” It was 11:30.

“You must hurry,” he told us.

Cliff dashed out to the plane and then came straight back with a scowl. The battery was dead.

We soon found the culprit, a light switched to the on position in the back. My son went pale. Connor had blocked up all the windows to avoid the sun glaring on the screen of his Gameboy and when he found he was sitting in the dark, he had turned on the overhead light. In the excitement of arriving, he had forgotten all about it. And now, the battery was dead.

He ran straight to his grandmother as the only person who might protect him from the lecture that was clearly due. I made a mental note to sort out a passenger check-list for the future flights.

Funnily enough, this took the pressure off as we now had no chance of getting away at a sensible time. We called the people at the gas pumps who expressed sympathy for our situation and arranged to send out help. They committed to staying until we were able to taxi over and get fuel, I was still going to be able to fly the family to Mannheim today. Just one issue left: I still needed VFR charts.

I invited my mother to join me in a visit to the main building to sort out the charts. A long-haired man in a rumpled shirt greeted us. This place looked much more like a general aviation terminal and he confirmed in very slow Italian that this was where in future all pilots would go, but not yet.

His English was minimal and my Italian worse. I waved my clip-board at him and he handed me a blank flight plan which I filled out quickly.

“The time? Do you have the time?” Assuming no further problems, we should be able to take off within half an hour. I tapped my wrist, the spot where my watch would be if I hadn’t lost it.

“Dodici,” he said followed by a moment of thought before he remembered the word in English. “Twelve.”

“No, it’s not,” said my mother. He frowned, wondering what he’d said wrong. “It’s two.”

“Two,” he repeated uncertainly.

“No, twelve,” I said. My mother frowned. “Zulu,” I told her and then more helpfully: “It’s the time in GMT.”

The man didn’t appear to be sure what the problem was. “Dodici,” he said, just to be clear. I nodded with a smile and then tried to ask him about charts.

I drew a rough outline of a boot kicking Sicily on the back of the flightplan with a little dot for Rome and a box around it. He smiled in comprehension. He led me to a table with a glass-encased chart of the area on it. It was beautifully done, clear VFR paths shown for all directions out of the airfield.

It was exactly what I needed. I smiled happily and told him I’d like one.

He looked at me in bemusement for a moment and told me I couldn’t have it.

I tried again: I want to buy one?

Nope. This was his map. It is there, for looking at.

He refused to part with it. I got a blank flightplan and sketched a more precise boot, with notes of our route and the visual reporting points we would pass. I just hoped I could find them again on the IFR chart.

I returned to find the battery charged and the plane fueled. The customs man admitted he had no further reason to detain us. Three hours after our planned start, we were finally ready to go but I was still nervous about not having the local VFR charts. I had tried recreating our route on the IFR charts, using the VORs to cross-check, but it wasn’t exact. I told Cliff that perhaps we should cancel the flight.

Hot and grumpy, he showed little patience: “Well, we could just never fly anywhere when we don’t have the charts.”

“Well, yes, precisely,” I muttered under my breath, with just enough self-preservation to ensure he couldn’t hear me.

On the other hand, I couldn’t quite imagine the response at the airfield if, after all the waiting and the jump start and staying on to get the fuel, I told them that, on second thought, I wanted to cancel owing to bad planning. I looked at the IFR charts and my notes again. It looked straight-forward and there were frequent VOR references for the route out. I was pretty sure I had it right and we had the GPS to ensure I knew where we were at any given time.

We flew at 2,500 feet, following their low-level routing as I watched for my landmarks and reporting points, some of which were marked on the GPS making it even simpler than I’d imagined. As we joined our flight-plan proper, I started to feel more confident.

“Sylvia.”

“Yes, Mom?” She had been so quiet up to now, I was impressed.

“You are talking really fast when you are on the radio. It makes it hard to understand you, especially for non-native English speakers. You need to slow down.”

I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. I knew that her words were undoubtedly true but I really didn’t want to set a precedent of my mother helping me to fly over the next three hours.

“Yes, Mom.”

It was surprisingly easy to understand the Italian guys on the radio. The only problem was place names, I’d never heard of most of them and finding them quickly on the map wasn’t easy. Report where? Pruja? I can’t find it! Ah, Perugia! I dove for the chart over and over again, ignoring my mother’s entreaty to keep my eyes on the road. Each time I found the place in question and we carried on, climbing in preparation for the Alps, the sun streaming in through the windows. Even Connor (still suitably chastised) looked out the window and pointed things out for us to look at.

We crossed the border to Austria and switched frequency to Innsbruck as we climbed to FL105. The view was astounding. Lakes nestled in dark green valleys surrounded by rough mountains glistening with snow. Glaciers loomed up ominously at us, too close for comfort. My instinct was to climb further but we couldn’t get much higher without needing oxygen. I stared, amazed and nervous, at the mountains so close to us; spell-bound until ATC interrupted me with my next reporting point: Brenner Pass.

I had been totally distracted with the view and panicked for a moment – unnecessarily, the pass was part of my route and clear on my map. But still I stuttered and by the time I had responded, we had already reached the pass. I immediately reported it. He sounded vaguely impatient as he asked me to report the Sierra VRP.

Busted – that was neither on the map nor marked on the GPS. I asked if I could report the Patscherkofel VOR instead please.

“Sierra is just south-west of the VOR,” he told me. “You should have a VFR chart with you.” I turned beet red. I could hear my mother shifting around in the back, clearly aware that I was being told off but not sure why.

“If you look down,” he continued. “you might notice there are mountains. It is dangerous.”

I struggled for a moment for the correct response. Affirm? Roger? Wilco? Nothing seemed right. “Understood,” I said after a moment. I prayed for another plane to cause a distraction but the radio remained silent: the other pilots in the air were no doubt grinning quietly as they listened to him reprimand me.

My ink pen chose that moment to begin leaking violently – my fingers and clipboard turning a deep blue. My friend at Innsbruck continued his lecture, this time receiving no response at all while I tried to minimize the staining. I wanted to make a note – “always bring pencil for high level flights!” but my pad was covered in ink. Innsbruck finally concluded the tirade with “report the VOR”. By now I had reached it. I reported this, leaving a blue fingerprint on the control.

We exited the pass and as we gently turned left the autopilot disengaged with a loud series of beeps.

I made sure we were straight and level and then checked – my dark-blue fingers weren’t anywhere near the button. The switch was in the correct position. I re-engaged the autopilot and it took control. Someone must have knocked it.

I was relieved when we switched frequencies to Munich and entered Germany, for which I had the correct maps. Then the autopilot disengaged again. Definitely no fingers near the button, the switch was normal. The electric trim was on, the power settings were correct. I re-engaged the auto-pilot. It disengaged.

My mother became very quiet as I cursed.

I was uncomfortably aware of how long it had been since I had needed to hand-fly the plane. Every time I spoke on the radio, I deviated 5 degrees or 50 feet.

We stuck with our routing but I was sweating, blue ink now smeared on my forehead.

Munich switched me to Stuttgart who cleared me to transit at not above 3,500 feet. I have not tried to fly a precise height since I got my license. Cliff volunteered to do the radio so that I could simply concentrate on keeping it straight and level. I glanced at him and realized that he had turned an odd shade of green: his offer was a desperate attempt to stop me pitching up and down like a rollercoaster.

I agreed and took the chance to check the gadgets again. I reset the electric trim and looked for any anomalies. I made sure I knew where we were on the map and shut down the GPS, resetting everything. It booted up nicely and the autopilot gave me a warm beep to say that it was ready, immediately followed by a series of jarring beeps as it disengaged itself again.

But without the distraction of the radio I was getting back into the swing of it, remembering the thrill of getting the plane perfectly in trim and letting go of the control – look Ma, no hands! She looked terribly disconcerted at my hands in the air, which made it even more of a pleasure. In no time at all we were over-flying Heidelberg and coming into Mannheim. We would arrive just in time for dinner.

As I focused on the approach, Cliff tried the autopilot and it engaged. I couldn’t help but take it personally, we were now ten miles out from our destination and I no longer needed it. I disengaged it and brought the plane in smoothly.

We parked by the terminal and my mother thanked me for a very interesting flight … but would I be terribly offended if next time she just went commercial?

This three-part story was originally published in the November 2007 issue of Piper Flyer magazine. As a result, I received my first ever piece of fan mail – a reader asked if I could possibly put him in touch with my mother regarding a conference that he thought she might be interested in.

As an epilogue: My mother will be visiting Germany and Rome in August and I couldn’t help but notice that she’s already purchased commercial flights for the trip.

Part Two: Sylvia’s Mother Said

Heide is a highly respected literacy practitioner and researcher based in New Mexico. She is highly regarded within her profession and invited all over the world to speak at conferences. She crosses the Atlantic at least once a year and usually ties in the conference with a trip home to Germany to visit her family. She flies United Airlines when she can. She’s very efficient and likes for everything to be just so. She’s also my Mother.

When she told me she was going to be in Italy for a week and then a further week in Germany, I started making plans to meet up with her. I made the mistake of copying my boyfriend on the email with her travel plans. He immediately mailed her.

“Don’t book a flight yet – Sylvia can fly you from Rome to Mannheim.”

Er, Sylvia can do what?

My mother was thrilled. I went into an immediate panic with deadlines looming but Cliff soothed me, promising he’d do the footwork and phone the airfields and sort out the navigation and all I would have to do is fly the plane. How hard could it be?

I relaxed. Big mistake. A week before we were due to fly to Rome, I suddenly realized I had barely flown in the past few months. A look at my log book confirmed my fears: I had not managed to take off a measly three times in the past 90 days, the minimum required for taking passengers. The thought of telling my Mother that I wasn’t going to be able to fly the plane (or at least, not with her in it) spurred me to immediate action: I needed to get up in the air and fast.

The problem is Málaga. Málaga is “the only real airport of merit in Andalucía” and the fourth busiest airport in Spain. In 2006 they handled 13,000,000 passengers and over 125,000 flights.

To put this into perspective, JFK International Airport handled 42.6 million passengers with 25 miles of taxiway and four runways. Málaga has a single 10,500 foot runway with a single parallel taxiway. They are building a second runway, planned for 2010 but in the meantime, it’s a bit busy there.

As a result, Málaga does not allow circuits and have gone so far as to ban VFR traffic during the weekends. The simple solution is to go to Axarquía, the small airfield 30km northeast of Málaga where I did my initial flight training. That’s where all the light aircraft go for practice and I knew I was being unreasonable in trying to avoid it.

I’ve not flown to Axarquía since the flying school took the Cessnas away and I did my conversion to the Piper Saratoga. The airfield is surrounded by hills and the runway is 1090 meters (3500 feet) but it has a displaced threshold and thus the landing distance available is actually 637 meters (2000 foot) if you land on the numbers. This was fine for the Cessna 172s that we trained in but I didn’t fancy trying to get the Saratoga in safely. I knew it could be done: Cliff had taken me there just to prove it was possible. Even then, I closed my eyes as we appeared to race towards the trees at the end of the runway.

However, given a choice between admitting to my Mother that I’d let my license lapse and landing the plane on a runway with an LDA twice the minimum length stated by the pilot’s operating manual, the way was clear. We went to Axarquía.

Cliff relocated the plane from Málaga, a process that involved an hour of prep and 5 minutes in the air. I drove there so that we would have the car: we wanted to leave the plane at Axarquía for its 50-hour check. Also, I wanted to have lunch at Las Cruces, one of my all-time favorite restaurants which is near the airfield but not quite in easy walking distance.

During the week Las Cruces acts as a type of venta, a Spanish restaurant aimed at the working class offering what I like to refer to as “old-fashioned fast food” with a set menu that the waiter rattles off. There are always three starters and three main dishes – you pick one from each category and choose a drink: water, beer or red wine. Because there are so few dishes, your food arrives in minutes. At Las Cruces, they are a bit more up-market: they offer a third course of dessert, again with three options. After your food, the waiter reappears with a cafe sólo and takes your money: a set price of 8 Euros per person. I have seen them deal with difficult tourists who wandered in looking for an authentic experience and then want to personalize their dish: “Can I have chips with that? Substitute the vegetables with some salad, please!” I always cringe but the waiters take it with good grace and comply when they can. Las Cruces is off the beaten track so they don’t get too many tourists, the place is generally full of farm workers and truck drivers shouting jokes at each other as they make their way through the quick and hearty meal.

On Sunday, the scene changes to cater to the after-church crowd with a full menu and more traditional pricing. They run it with a single seating, you are expected to stay the afternoon. They have a huge outdoor barbecue which they fire up at noon with two people working through the dishes as quickly as they can. Lamb chops, slices of pork loin, beef entrecote. Grilled peppers, grilled cheese, grilled bread rubbed with tomato and olive oil. If they can put it on the barbecue, they will and everything is done to perfection.

But the Las Cruces barbecue is off-limits on a flying day: weight and balance would be seriously skewed after such a meal. I knew, deep down, that I shouldn’t combine flying and a three-hour lunch and that it wouldn’t quite be the same if I couldn’t sample their house red wine and so, with regret, we arranged to go in the middle of the week.

I drove up to the airfield and let myself in. There was a new banner draped across the fence advertising the flying school but the place seemed deserted. No one was outside at all. The television at the bar blared the local news into an empty room. A German Shepherd which I remembered well from my training (he ran across the runway in fright as I was landing from my first solo nav flight) was locked behind a chain link fence, watching me balefully.

When I had been here before, everything was organized by the instructors who had flown in from England. I remember them complaining about how lackadaisical everything was, shaking their heads at the street map with Málaga’s visual reporting points drawn onto it, finding out about the local airfields and where we could go for the cross country navigation or even just a few circuits. I hadn’t realized at the time, but they’d livened the place up immensely: from the moment I (or any other student) walked through the door, we were greeted and organized. As I crossed the dusty courtyard, it felt like a ghost town. Cliff had just touched down and parked the plane while I went in search of someone to talk to. I found a woman in the back office who looked unhappy to have been disturbed. I told her that I was planning to fly circuits and she told me not to bother her until I’d done them, then I could pay.

I’d rather hoped for an excuse to put this moment off but Cliff had thoughtfully refueled the plane in Málaga and there was nothing for it: it was time to get into the air. I got into the plane and remembered my first solo flight here: I spoke to myself, DJ style, throughout the circuit. “You’ll be just fine, Sylvia, they wouldn’t have let you out here if they didn’t think you can do it, all you have to do is get the plane up into the air, turn it around, and bring it back down.” As I remembered that first solo, my fear suddenly melted away. I’d been so worried about the short landing distance, the hills, the lack of a tower and blind radio calls that I’d forgotten the huge advantage that this airfield held for me:

I learned to fly here.

I spent 50 hours flying in and out of that airfield, compared to a few hours at any other airfield. I could hear Tom’s voice from the start: telling me to leave my hands on my thighs while I taxied to curb my urge to “steer” with the column, showing me where to pull off the runway and how to best angle the plane into the wind for my power checks without blocking access for other planes. As I took off I immediately heard him telling me that it was inconsiderate to fly too low over villages and that I should turn crosswind just a little bit early to avoid the buildings we could see coming up, the corner of Vélez-Málaga. I knew exactly where the circuit was, as if someone had drawn the lines onto the ground for me to follow.

I struggled a bit trying to get everything done in time for what is definitely a small and very fast circuit in the Saratoga but it was not a big deal – there was no reason for me to be nervous about the airfield at all. By the second circuit I was on top of things and Tom’s voice stopped nagging me by the third. I did two more for luck and then landed the plane just as the banner planes started to head out for their afternoon run over the beaches of Marbella.

My reward followed at Las Cruces. A cold glass of San Miguel, a bowl of picadillo (a soup made with chunks of Spanish ham and pieces of boiled egg) followed by a hot plate of pork in garlic. I was feeling pretty good about everything. In a few days, I would be in Rome, taking my son to see the Coliseum and the Vatican City. Cliff had plotted us a route over the Alps with a slight diversion so that we could fly over my cousin’s Bavarian bed and breakfast on the German-Austrian border which we were saving as a special surprise for my mother. Our destination was Mannheim, the city where I spent a good chunk of my childhood so I was sure I would have no problems finding the airfield, which was quite conveniently located just five minutes away from my Uncle’s house where dinner would be waiting.

What could possibly go wrong?

Part Two: Sylvia’s Mother Said

Ask a CFI has done a post on Checkride Butterflies and it reminded me of my first time.

“You fly just like a woman.”

I blink.

I am sitting in the left seat of a Piper, somewhere over the beautiful English countryside known as the Cotswolds. On my right is Bob, an experienced pilot and examiner in his early 60’s. He is checking me out for my complex rating. We’ve done circuits, a few different landing configurations, then flown out and up for general handling. I remembered my HASELL checks, managed to get the plane into the stall on my second attempt (something about it still makes me shiver) and I am feeling pretty good about the recovery. The steep turn to the left was a bit of a roller coaster but I was within limits when I turned back onto the straight and level. I didn’t panic during the practice false landing and I could swear I saw his mouth twitch into a smile when I had plenty of time spare for a passenger briefing. I thought it was going well.

His words fill the cockpit and time stands still.

I was no stranger to the attitude that women shouldn’t fly. I did my PPL training in southern Spain which was a unique introduction to Mediterranean machismo.

When I did my cross-country solo, I planned a straight-forward route from Axarquía to Granada, Granada to Almería and Almería back to Axarquía. I’d flown the run a few times and I was feeling quietly confident about it. Granada and Almería both have reassuringly large runways and very little traffic, a perfect combination. Everything went fine for the first leg, then I landed at Almería and strolled in to sort out the landing fee.

A red-faced man fired questions at me in Spanish: was it a private plane? Where had it come from? How long was it staying? A younger man stood nearby with a pad and pen as if ready to take notes if I contradicted myself. It was a bit odd but seemed to be going well until he asked about the pilot.

“That would be me.”
“No, I mean the person that flew the plane,” he said. Perhaps he thought it was a language issue.

“Sí.” I gave him a winning smile. “That’s me. I’m the pilot.”

He frowned. “You?”

“Yes, me.”

“All on your own?”

I could feel the blush creeping up on my face, as if I’d done something wrong. “Yes, alone. Sola. I am the pilot of that plane.”

He stepped passed me and walked over towards the apron, looking out towards the plane, as if I had some able-bodied man hiding beneath the wing, ready to pop out and fly the plane when no one was looking.

I fumed inwardly. I was pretty sure he was airport security and had no business stopping me from getting to Ops. I bit my lip, kept the harsh words from escaping.

He shook his head and stormed out of the room. The young assistant stepped forward to follow him and then stopped, put his hand on my shoulder.

“I think that’s great,” he whispered, then rushed to follow his boss.

I grinned like a maniac all the way home.

So yes, I’d seen it before and I knew that there were men out there that felt women just didn’t belong in the cockpit. It wasn’t such a big deal for me, personally, flying for a hobby as opposed to fighting against a glass ceiling. Still, it pushed me through my PPL, made me strive for more than just competent. I wanted to be good, good enough to erode the stereotypes.

“You fly just like a woman.”

Today is important to me, today I am expecting to become a real pilot. And now this. We’re straight and level. The examiner, who seemed a very nice British gentleman when I met him an hour ago, is looking at me expectantly.

I blink again and promise myself I will keep my cool, whatever happens.

“Pardon?” The word comes out as a whisper.

A smile flashes across his face. “By which I mean, you have bothered to learn the theory of what you are doing rather than just jumping in the cockpit and going through the motions. It’s refreshing.”

“You mean, I passed?”

“Of course you passed! That was great. You need experience, of course, but who doesn’t! I’m utterly confident you will continue to apply yourself like you did today and make a very good pilot. That’s the airfield at your two o’clock, by the way, I want to see a flapless landing.”

I set up for the approach, trying to quell the semi-hysterical laughter bubbling in my throat. I passed! How silly of me, to assume that was an insult. I should know better. Women pilots – after all, it’s not some newfangled idea, just think about Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson!

As the plane touches down, I allow myself a huge smile. That’s a comparison worth striving towards. I want to fly just like a woman.

I found myself with a week clear in Southern Spain; free time spanning in front of me and not a single claim to my time. Add to that a Piper Saratoga parked in Málaga gathering dust and it was clear: it was time to go flying. After months of bad weather followed by hectic schedules leaving no time for private flying, I looked forward to getting back into the air. I picked up my PPL and log book and then I looked at the dates. How long since my last flight? A refresher might be in order!

Someone was working on my behalf in the karma stakes. I spoke to Lee, my ex-instructor, who agreed that a short break in Spain sounded like fun, even if it was going to involve spending a day flying with me.

And so we fly.

Lee still remembers my weak spots from training and has a good idea of what I’m probably out of date on. To my dismay, he informs me that we will do engine failures, my most unfavourite past-time. This involves the normally quite sympathetic man sitting next to me suddenly closing the throttle and saying “Your engine has failed, now what?”

Screaming, apparently, is not an option.

I bite my lip and try to remember the sequence of events. This should be second nature, I know that. In a real emergency, there’s no time to sit and think. I exhale sharply as I realize that I’ve instinctively started to deal with the issue: while I’m pondering, I’ve put the plane into a glide configuration, maximizing our time in the air. OK, I remember this now: the next step is to work out which way the wind is going. I scan the ground for smoke stacks, hoping to get a hint, but no one has thought to oblige me with a bonfire. The trees seem still, there’s no local train, I’m running out of things to look for. Meanwhile the plane is drifting along the way a heavy Piper Saratoga drifts, which is with a distinct downward motion.

“You are taking too long,” Lee says, sounding calm and patient despite the fact that I’ve clearly lost the plot.

I point the plane based on our runway direction, at least that’s generally in line with what the wind was when we took off. He smiles and waits. It seems to be falling into place now, my next move is obvious.

I start looking for some place I would be able to land without killing us. The Spanish landscape looks uninviting: dusty hills and rivers weaving their way to the coast, the occasional road twisting around the landscape. Orchards of olives, a favourite sight down on the ground, frustrate me now that I’m looking for something flat. The main crops of Andalucía: oranges, olives, almonds: none of these can help me now. My forehead prickles with perspiration. Finally I see a gap, a flat rectangle at about the right distance.

“That field, there.”

“The one with the tree in the middle?”

I wince, but there’s plenty of room either side. Yeah, that one.

It’s time to start looking at what is wrong with the engine and whether it’s recoverable. I put my hand on the throttle: that’ll fix it!

Lee knows me too well; he shakes his head. I leave the throttle where it is and pretend to check all the other things that might have gone wrong. Fuel, oil, magnetos, fuel pump. I try to take the checks seriously, but it’s difficult. I tap the things I would check and pretend to turn off the fuel.

“Right, I’m taking her down.”

I’ve failed to find the problem with the engine; we have run out of options. I mime making sure the plane is secured, feathering the prop, turning off the magnetos and then I say the words: “We’re landing in a field.” Now my stomach tightens, even though I know it’s not for real.

“Might want to tell someone?”

“Oh yeah…. Mayday mayday mayday November 666 Echo X-ray has an engine failure, somewhere south of Granada, putting her down in a field.”

I should be trying to give them a more exact location but at the moment I’m more concerned about lining up on my base leg; the fake radio call is the least of my worries. I turn the plane again and my eyes flit between the field and my altitude. What’s ground level here?

It strikes me that this is rather critical and I break protocol to ask.

“How high is the ground?”

“Coming up quick, Sylvia, come on. Wheels?”

Lee doesn’t give hints. Well, I guess he does, as landing gear is pretty critical. I put the wheels down and turn again, now I’m heading straight in for my field, on final. I’m proud of myself for remembering the next step.

“As we come down could you please open your door and adopt the brace position.”

He nods with a slight smile.

I’d feel good about this but we are still going down. I’m expecting him to break off the exercise and let me put the power back on, but he’s taking advantage of the fact that we are in the middle of nowhere. Low flying rules are a bind in southern England, less so “somewhere south of Granada” where it’s all fields and no populated areas to avoid. My knuckles turn white as I clench the control. We are now 3000 foot above sea level, I reckon the ground to be at least 1800′.

I put the flaps down and we continue to descend. The ground is scarily close. On the third level of flaps, with the tree now stealing my entire focus, he finally says the magic words,

“That’s fine, go around.”

I push the throttle in and climb away.

“You’d have made that,” he says.

The ultimate praise.

Part One of Two – originally published in Piper Flyer

Flying feels different in the dark. Sitting in a commercial plane, looking at the black outside the window, the viewpoint strikes me as so completely different. This isn’t an issue during the day, I look out at cities and farmland and lakes and railway lines: they are real. At night it all changes: the twinkly lights that almost mirror a desert night sky have a sheen of unreality, an otherworldliness. It is harder to imagine the commuter and the tractor and the holiday makers and the train engineers when I look down at the lights below. The lit world of the jet is a distinct place, a separate world suspended between ground and sky. As I sip my gin and tonic, I imagine we are in orbit rather than just flying from Luton to Málaga on the late night flight.

Or perhaps I shouldn’t read science fiction novels while I wait for boarding to start.

The first time Cliff flew the Saratoga at night I was at home, pacing. I was a wreck. Would he find the airport? If he accidentally flew out to sea, how would he notice? What if he flew into a mountain? How can you tell the difference between the black of the mountain and the black of the sea, anyway? It seemed terribly dangerous, flying at night.

It wasn’t until he got his IFR licence that I relaxed … until the day came which my regular readers will already have anticipated: he asked me why I didn’t go and get my night rating as well.

In the UK, if you wish to fly at night you have to have a separate rating. Unlike the US, the training for the Private Pilot Licence carries no requirement at all for flying on instruments. You can’t complete a night rating as a part of your PPL: first you must have a minimum of 50 flying hours of which 20 hours must be as Pilot in Command and 10 of those hours must be post-qualification. It’s not a particularly onerous requirement but they do wish you to be comfortable with basic flying before learning a new viewpoint.

I had just reached 100 hours as Pilot of Command so this was hardly an issue. However, getting the night rating wasn’t a priority for me: my home airfield of Málaga doesn’t allow VFR at night. Most of my flying is in the summer and the UK is far enough north that even South East England has sunsets around 9pm, long after I’ve left the airfield and gone out for a beer.

I had considered doing some instrument training but at a very basic level, I didn’t want to do this. The amount of theory was intimidating and I didn’t like to think about trying to land with a hood on. Also, flying by instruments felt a bit like cheating, looking inside instead of out, relying on machines to tell me what to do. I was afraid it might be difficult to tell the difference between the cockpit and Microsoft Flight Simulator. Realistically I knew that anything with that much studying and testing and hours and exams couldn’t possibly be as simple as being told how to fly but I couldn’t help but be wary of the idea. If I knew the plane could fly better than me, then why was I flying at all? It seemed better to avoid the existential questions along with the instrument rating.

On the other hand, I had pushed a lot of limits recently and it seemed time to move onto the next step. The night rating doesn’t need a heavy time/training commitment and could come in useful at some point. Flying with an instructor again would also catch some of the lazy habits I had no doubt fallen into. I had recently been made uncomfortably aware of how difficult I found it to fly the plane without an auto-pilot, a refresher was definitely in order. I decided I would get the rating.

I did what preparation I could: I spent some time reading up on instrument flying and watched out the window on late-night British Airways flights to Málaga, trying to identify the runway from the distance. This isn’t particularly a challenge: the runway is perpendicular to the coast and all 10,500 metres of it is surrounded by bright lights. Honestly, if you can’t find Málaga airfield at night, you may as well throw in the towel right now. But it was interesting to think of it as a navigation exercise, trying to recognize the cities along the route that I knew from my own flying in the area, without the ridges and rivers and lakes that I was used to. A simple route that I flew often as a passenger and fairly regularly as a pilot already looked completely cold and foreign. My map felt useless – why don’t they do separate night maps, showing the clusters of city lighting and the blackouts of the uninhabited areas, like a light box toy or the maps of the heavens. Approximate blobs for concentrated lights and dotted lines for the highways with the blackest of blacks for the water would make navigation much easier.

Still, fear of the ground hadn’t stopped me yet, this was just ground that I couldn’t see. Perhaps better not to think about that.

[...]

Part 2

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Kidlington Airfield, now known as Oxford Airport, has been in use since the 1930s. Their training history began in World War II when it was used as a training centre for Royal Air Force pilots. Today, even with a downturn in new pilots, 73% of their traffic is training flights. Their circuit can get very full. I once ended up in the circuit with half a dozen planes of different speeds, desperately trying to stay ahead of the jet and not overtake the Cessnas. Regardless of the stresses, I’ve found that Oxford ATC remains consistently pleasant, helpful and actively on the look-out for problems so that they can help the pilots avoid them.

I know the airfield well because Oxford is where I did my conversion to complex, soon after completing my PPL. At the time, every circuit was a struggle as I tried to comprehend the speed and weight of the Saratoga after learning in Cessna 172s. But it was back on the ground where I had the most trouble.

After a few hours in the air, my instructor said he was happy for me to take the Saratoga up on my own after a break. Circuits still felt a rush, much like when I started flying, but I was starting to feel like it might be just about under control.

We stopped at the pumps to fill her up. The instructor had another student waiting, so was in a rush. “You can taxi it back OK, right?”

Having just agreed to take the beast out solo I could hardly claim that I needed help moving it from the fuel tanks to my parking spot. I gave him a brave grin. “I’ll be fine, you go!”

He bounded away while I glared at the plane, daring it to embarrass me in public. I went through the complete start-up checks, as if I were about to take it to Japan. Then I took a deep breath and started the engine. So far, so good. My transit across the airfield was approved and I drove at a slow speed, feeling in control for the first time that day.

Except that someone had parked next to my parking space. Not in it but next to it, in such a way that I had to navigate behind it, between the other plane’s tail and a large fence, to get to my spot.

I looked around hopefully: maybe that somebody was about to leave. No such luck, no pilot near. I had just about decided to swing around and park over by the flying school planes, when I noticed three young guys looking at my plane. Watching me, as I vacillated and blocked up the taxi way trying to work out what to do, no doubt wondering what such a little girl was doing in so much Saratoga.

I looked at my parking space again. It was totally accessible if I slipped in between the plane and the fence and then did a hard right; I couldn’t fault the pilot’s parking. I looked at the young guys again and felt an irrational surge of pride. I’ll swing it right in, park it perfectly, that’ll show them!

That’ll show them, indeed. I pulled around, keeping extra far from the other plane, worried about my low wing clipping his tail. Then I realised that I had overcompensated: the left wing was dangerously close to the corner of the fence. I pondered for a moment, should I just go for it and hope? Even I wasn’t that fool-hardy: I cut the engine and got out to look.

I couldn’t carry on: my left wing was clearly going to clip the fence. I needed to push back but I knew there was no chance I could budge it on my own: I’d taken the engine to over 2000 RPM just to get it to roll forward on the grass.

I glanced at the guys but they were now deep in conversation. Did they really not notice my problem? Or were they sniggering quietly? I looked around again in desperation. At that moment, a good looking, dark-haired man came towards me.

He called out. “Need me to move my plane?”

I waited until he reached me to shake my head, no. “That’s not going to help at this stage.”

He grinned. “No, it won’t. What are you going to do?”

Various pitiful answers went through my head but I simply said, “I’m going to have to push it back,” like this were within the realms of possibility.

He nodded; I felt like I’d passed some sort of test.

“I’ll help you,” he told me. We positioned ourselves either side of the propeller and I was about to push for all I was worth when he shouted at the young guys still standing in the car park.

“Hey, give us a hand here.”

They dashed over. “Anything for a damsel in distress,” said my new friend with a wink. With a single heave the plane rolled back. I was clear for another go.

“I’ll marshal you in,” he said as I climbed into the cockpit. The three guys smiled and waved and retreated back to the parking lot. I started up and he guided me straight through the gap and into my spot.

“Nice parking,” said my instructor as I walked into the school. He’d watched it all through the picture window.

“One word about women drivers and I’ll kill you,” I snapped, making a bee-line for the coffee machine. “I said I could do circuits solo, I never said a word about taxiing.”

An hour later, the guys were still in the car park, chatting away. Not a snigger in sight.

I climbed into the plane and wondered why I was so quick to sabotage myself. If I’d asked one of them to guide me in when I saw them glancing at the plane, it would have looked professional and competent – as opposed to having to push the plane by brute force.

I considered that maybe I was my own worst enemy and taxied away.

Of course these days, I don’t have that problem. I simply make a point of hanging out at airfields with bigger parking spaces:

Cliff taxied the plane over to the pumps and I hopped out to get us some fuel.

“I’ll get out in a moment,” Cliff said. “I just want to put our route into the GPS first.”

“No problem.”

I walked over to the tiny booth behind the pumps and tapped at the door. A pale round face peered out at me.

“Hi,” I grinned. “We radio’d to say we needed some fuel?”

He chewed his bottom lip and then nodded. “How are you going to pay?”

I paused for a quarter second and he started listing the payment methods they would accept.

“Credit card,” I interjected quickly.

“We only take VISA and Mastercard,” he said with a frown.

“VISA is fine.”

“OK,” he said and finally came out of the hut. “We don’t take American Express though.”

I presumed he’d had a bad experience with a previous client. I nodded in what I hoped was a reassuring manner.

He put on a large pair of goggles and walked over to the tanks. Then he stopped and stared at the plane. I scuttled over to him.

He nodded at Cliff. “The pilot will need to disembark,” he said, distaste dripping from every word. “I can not start until he exits the plane.”

I nodded and walked to the plane to tap in the window. Cliff climbed out of the plane and then watched as the man reset the pumps. He glanced around to make sure no one was near the plane and then hooked the earth wire to the front before wandering back to the pumps to pulling the hose out.

“Could have finished by now,” muttered Cliff.

One last look around to make sure everyone was in position and finally he was ready to offer us fuel.

He filled one side and called Cliff over. He handed him the cap to screw in and watched Cliff close the tank. “You should have checked it,” he said.

Cliff looked at him blankly.

“The fuel. You didn’t check the level before closing the tank.”

“I did,” growled Cliff. The man shrugged and moved over to the other wing. He then smiled at Cliff and held up the cap.

“Check the level and then close it!”

I sniggered as Cliff stalked over and closed the tank under the man’s watchful eyes. Once he was happy that Cliff had done his job correctly, he rolled up the hose, took off his goggles and asked us to follow him to the hut.

He smiled as the credit card transaction went through without a hitch. Another potential crisis averted through proper planning. Cliff signed and we turned to go back to the plane when the man put his hand on Cliff’s shoulder.

“Your safety stickers,” he said, shaking his head. “They are old.”

Surprised, we walked out to the plane to look at our decals. They seem fine: big print stating AVGAS ONLY, a picture of a pump and Grade 100LL written underneath. Everyone you need to know to to ensure someone doesn’t fill the tanks full of jet fuel.

The man waved a sheet at us with two bright red squares saying AVGAS. “It says AVGAS on our stickers already,” complained Cliff.

“Yes, but they are getting dirty around the edges. These are new.” He pressed the stickers into my hand. “You can put them next to yours if you want but I think replacing them would be better.”

I searched for a response that would get us out of here. “I will,” I told him. “But the wings are so dirty now. I will go wash the wings and put the stickers on once they are clean.”

His chest swelled with satisfaction. He patted me on the arm. “That’s a good idea,” he said and retreated back to his hut.

Cliff shoved my shoulder. “Wake up.”

I squinted and realised it was still dark. The shutters act as my alarm clock but they weren’t due to rise for another half an hour. I ignored him and rolled over.
“Get up,” he said. “It’s your birthday.”

I put the pillow over my head.

“Wake up! Come on, you have to get packed.”

“You aren’t really sending me away because I’m old, are you?”

“Yes,” he said and then grinned when my eyes opened. “It’s a do-it-yourself birthday present. Get packed.”

I admit I was relieved when I saw that he was packing a bag as well. Suddenly I understood why he’d turned down a drink the night before. I’ve been on a diet and he said to wait to have a drink until my birthday – but of course he knew he’d be flying. Still, he wouldn’t tell me where we were going.

“Take three days worth. Expect warm days and cool nights. Make sure you have walking shoes and evening wear.”

That didn’t narrow it down much. “Give me a hint?”

“It’s a single hop.”

That narrowed it down considerably. I drew a circle in my head. “Portugal, France, Northern Africa,” I said.

“All of Spain,” he added. “And Gibraltar.”

“You’d be bored to tears if we spent three days in Gibraltar. And I wouldn’t need evening dress.”

I packed for Paris. I didn’t like to tell him how obvious it was, so I pretended that I was still thinking about it. A weekend of good food and expensive wine sounded quite nice and I could catch up on anything I missed at the hotel.

I admitted I’d worked it out on the way to the airfield. “Oh no,” he told me. “Too cold.”

Oh. I considered the other half of the circle.

“Menorca?”

“Too windy.”

Suddenly it clicked. A place I’d said repeatedly I wanted to go to. The sights of the souks, the comfort of the riads, the taste of chicken with preserved lemons and olives followed by mint tea, the sounds of the mosques calling the Muslims to prayer. The land of the Arabs and the Berbers.

Marrakesh.

I’ve talked about going there for years and even got so far as to investigate places to stay once, but something got in the way and Cliff was never that interested. Now I was finally going to go to this place I’d heard so much about. I was going to Marrakesh!

As we arrived at Málaga General Aviation, it dawned on me. “It’s a Muslim country. What about my birthday drink?”

“I suppose you’ll have to wait until next year.” He grinned as he got out of the car. “Happy Birthday!”

I’m working on an article called Sylvia’s Mother at the moment (er, if you are my editor, read “working on” as “finishing off”. I swear you’ll have it by Friday) and wrote about my thoughts before taking my mom and my son up in the Saratoga.

This is from my initial draft. I can’t help but feel that the family flying magazine that the final article is aimed at would not appreciate this.

Every time I thought about it, I ended up with my heart in my throat. My mother and my son in the back of the light aircraft. If I mess up, it isn’t just me. They are trusting me to fly the plane – this plane that still scares the bejeebus out of me. What if I lose concentration and twiddle the vertical speed knob counter-clockwise instead of clockwise and the plane starts to dive dive dive down into the ground and we end up a fiery inferno on some Tuscan farm, last words of what-the-fuck?

I know this is ludicrous. I have, on one occasion, twiddled that very knob the wrong way. The moment the nose tilted down, I disengaged the auto-pilot and tilted it back up. No drama, we lost no more than fifty feet of height. I know the fear isn’t rational. But still. Are they out of their minds?!

So, it’s cut for now, although I might try to rewrite it in a more gentle fashion and re-insert it. First I need to go find out what a bejeebus actually is!

I made a mistake.

I pitched an aviation article which involves bitching about people not speaking English. Actually, it’s worse than that. This is about people in a foreign country who do speak English … and then there’s me, bitching that their English isn’t good enough.

Ugh.

Obviously, I didn’t realise that that’s what it boiled down to; I have many failings but xenophobia is not one of them. “Foreign” isn’t a bad word, nor something to be feared –foreign just means someplace I haven’t lived yet.

I could still do the article as it stands — just write 1500 words on how annoying it is that the world isn’t set up better for my convenience. Submit the piece, pick up my cash and move onto the next problem, without any real issues.

Other than sleeping at night.

So, back to the drawing board. The subject is problems with flying abroad and the real issue with the piece is that I have plenty to moan about but no solutions. And the biggest problem that I’ve confronted is language, or my lack of comprehension thereof.

If I knew how to fly across France without having to say “say again?” every other transmission, I wouldn’t try to shove that leg onto Cliff all the time.

To a great extent it’s experience — knowing what to expect in a standard conversation. When Cliff flies, he’s predicting the next conversation. The controller could speak Martian and Cliff would guess the question and give the right answer most of the time. None of this “I need to think this over” stuff.

And then there’s the language itself — he speaks French, he understands French, the French accent is on some level comprehensible to him. I have much less issue flying through Spanish airspace, because the rolling r’s and the short i’s and all those markers of a Spanish speaker are known to me and I can “translate” their words into something approaching RP English very quickly.

I can’t do that in French (and nor should I have to! whines the sulky part of my brain, the part of me who doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with this article and doesn’t understand why she’s not allowed to write it anymore) which means I’m not “correcting” the pronunciation to what I’m expecting. I have to parse every sentence twice which doesn’t sound like much but adds up fast, especially when it’s hectic. And then, often I am still not sure what the controller said. It doesn’t help that often their English is limited such that they literally say it again — word for word, unable to rephrase the way a fluent English speaker might.

It happens in reverse too, of course. My American accent in a sky filled with British pilots can be just enough to get those controllers saying “say again?” right back to me. This is exacerbated by my own language difficulties: I’m not fluent in Aviation English and I’m used to relying on the controllers’ fluency to get by. Once I get flustered and start forgetting those set phrases, we are in real trouble.

Say again?

There are other issues flying abroad, of course, most of them are on the ground. And don’t get me started on military airspace. I could tell you stories …

Ah, and so we get to a start point. Sometimes just having someone to bounce things off of makes all the difference.

OK, I’m off to write that article. Thanks for the help.

We sat on the terrace of the Chalet, gazing out at the water and Sark in the distance, while Peter and Mary put up with a torrent of questions about the island and the must-see places.

“And while you are exploring the bays, you should go visit the towers, they’ve been put into quite good order, although I still wouldn’t want to be a soldier living in it during a winter gale! Just don’t believe anyone that tells you that the towers are all Martellos. Most of them are not.” Peter gave me a stern look.

“Not what?”

“Not a Martello tower,” Peter explained.

It seems that in 1794 during the Napoleonic Wars, the British responded to a plea from Corsica to help them fight off the French. The Royal Navy attacked and captured a large, round tower on Mortella Point but it took two days and they suffered unexpected casualties. When the British left Corsica, they decided to destroy the tower to keep it from being used by the French but even that proved more difficult than expected. The Royal Navy was impressed and made plans of the tower, apparently at this point getting the name wrong. The decision was made to create towers in the same style to defend the English Coast. In the early 1800s a hundred of these towers were built: chunky brick structures that were 30 foot tall and 13 foot thick on the seaward side. The towers became redundant when Napoleon defeated in 1815 and were never used in battle.

“We have 15 towers along the coast,” Peter told me, “but they pre-date the Martello towers, built in 1780. They are smaller and not as strong. Guernsey does have Martello towers: Fort Grey is one, they call it the cup and saucer. I think there are two others. But the locals will tell you they are all Martello towers. They aren’t.”

I nodded, impressed at the pitfalls involved in describing disused fortifications.

Much later, I had forgotten about the conversation when I saw grey brick looming up from a green field covered in buttercups. I realised that I had found one of the towers that Peter had been telling me about. I explored around it and its cannons. I laughed aloud when I found and read the plaque attached to it. The plaque is there to inform visitors that they have reached Tower No. 11, Rousse Tower, and that it is not a Martello tower.

The Casquets, the set of towers we’d seen on the flight in, is not surprisingly an important figure within the recent history of the island but the most interesting and tragic story is told at the Maritime Museum: the wreck of the Stella.

In the 1890s the competition between the ‘London and South Western’ and ‘the Great Western’ railway companies was heating up. The route across the Channel to the Channel Islands became the main battleground, with the ships openly racing each other to get their passengers ashore first. A number of issues were reported (with the Captains generally claiming they were “racing the tide”) but generally this competition was seen as exciting and a newspaper article in the Guernsey Star reports on a race between the Ibex (Great Western) and the Frederica (London and South Western) as if it were a sporting event. “The Frederica, skirting near the rocks and crossing the Ibex’s bows, beat the latter, after a grand race, by one minute and a half at the pier heads.”

The Stella was one of three steamers put into service in 1890 by London and South Western specifically for speed; the company’s advertising focused on best crossing times. By 1899, however,  there had been at least one accident due to the competition (the Ibex struck a ledge going full-speed 40 feet from the Frederica) which led to an inquiry and the Captains certificate being suspended for six months. A sensible concern regarding the racing is beginning to arise and the two railway companies were “making tentative efforts to call a halt”.

However, the ‘Easter run’, the first daylight runs of the season, whetted interest in the best crossing times and spirits were high with special low fares offered for the holiday.

The Stella departed on March 30th under the command of a seasoned Captain within this context: a priority of getting the ship and her passengers to the Channel Islands as quickly as possible.

The ship met rail passengers from Waterloo at Southampton and then began the trip to Guernsey and Jersey with 217 on board. The weather was sunny and clear when they departed Southampton and continued to be fine as they passed the Isle of Wight. Shortly after passing the Needles, a thick fog began to form. The captain slowed to half-speed until they cleared the fog and then resumed his initial speed of 18 knots.

Shortly thereafter the fog descended around the Stella again but the Captain kept the ship at 18 knots. The Captain and various crew members, including the first officer, remained on the bridge, with a seaman sounding the fog whistle. At this point, the Captain and crew seemed to believe they were still half an hour away from the Casquets: a dangerous reef with three lighthouses placed upon it which was used as a standard visual turning point for the route to Guernsey.

It is unclear how the Stella had managed to veer off her course but at this stage she is still travelling at 18 knots in heavy fog. ‘The Wreck of the Stella’ by John Ovendon and David Shayer gives the following chilling account of Captain Reeks final moments:

“At 4pm three things happened simultaneously. Reeks heard — and the sound must have made the hair stand on his neck — a fog-horn blast of immense power from directly above his head; Hartup in the bow yelled ‘Stop her’ and ran back along the deck covering his head with his forearm; and at the same moment the men on the bridge and a handful of passengers on the deck saw, ‘as though a door had suddenly opened’, an immense rock loom out of the fog 80 yards directly ahead, towering over the ship.”

The Captain tried evasive action but it was too late and the Stella was going too fast. The dangerous shoals of the Casquets tore out the bottom of her hull. The fog was such that the keepers of the lighthouse never saw a thing.

Within 8 minutes the ship had sunk. 105 passengers and crew died in the worst disaster in the history of the Channel Islands’ mail steamers.

I sat on the concrete, trying to apply mascara and lipstick without a mirror, surrounded by parked planes. What the hell was I doing here?

A few weeks ago, it had all seemed sensible and, dare I say it? �fun. I was wildly optimistic about the whole idea and even invited Cliff’s mother to join us for the first trip to the Channel Islands. I bragged about my ability to get by on a wing and a prayer and even bought a jaunty little wheelie bag for the island flying. This lasted until it was actually time to pack. I sat at home on my bed, surrounded by piles of clothes — winter jumpers and summer t-shirts, walking clothes and dinner outfits and shoes for all occasions. I cut it down to half what I thought I needed and then looked at the dinky bag again. Not even close. I finally broke down and dragged a proper suitcase up from the garage and promptly filled it.

I was spending a week island-hopping in a small plane. The British Airways staff who checked me in for the flight to Heathrow marked my bag as “heavy.” This wasn’t an auspicious start.

The plan was simple: fly to Heathrow and get a lift to Elstree in North London the night before, make sure the Saratoga looked healthy and happy, then stay locally and leave for Guernsey first thing in the morning. We arrived at the airfield at dusk and I couldn’t help but feel that the big, bulky, heavy lump of a suitcase was over the top for the single night’s stay, so I shoved it into the back of the plane and left it there.

This led to me waking up in a small brick hotel with nothing but my flight bag. I am not really a morning person. At quarter to eight I lay there gripping the side of the bed tightly, willing myself to wake up and be functional. Cliff tried to tempt me with descriptions of a fried breakfast. I put the pillow over my head.

Eventually I forced myself out of bed. Bleary-eyed and out of sorts, I realised just how foolish I had been. No shampoo, no hairbrush, no toothbrush for God’s sake. Just me and some maps.

In an hour, I would be flying. Under the circumstances, it seemed a bad idea. I took a deep breath, splashed water on my face and considered flight planning, specifically the weather. The correct procedure is to check met reports and phone airfields directly. My handy-dandy copy of Pooleys Airfield information has the phone numbers. It also has two pages of instructions for flying into the Channel Islands, in addition to the standard airfield information. I felt intimidated. I decided to avoid speaking to them in case they noticed quite how incompetent I was and banned me from coming. I looked out the window instead. The sun was shining. A taxi was waiting for us outside. It was time to go.

That was how I ended up on the tarmac, brushing my hair and wondering if it was too late to cancel. It was: I watched another taxi deposit Cliff’s mother, Anne. She arrived along with her wheel chair and a tiny carry-on bag with everything she needed for the week. I blushed and hid my Samsonite out of the way and pretended to make a big show of how heavy her case was. It weighed slightly more than my make-up bag.