PeanutWood

Christmas!

Author: Adrian

Sleigh Decoration, originally uploaded by Adrian Court.

Christmas is rapidly approaching now, less than a week to go. The tree is up, most of the presents are under the tree already and we’ve had the unusual treat of some snow for a change – although the chances of it staying around until Christmas Day seem rather remote.

I’ve been playing with the camera more recently, trying to take better pictures and use some of the features on it rather than just the AUTO mode. Having the tree up has given me the opportunity to play with close-up photography and different lights.

This decoration is a present from my sister Nicola, it came from San Francisco on her round-the-world adventure earlier this year. The image is not photoshopped, but taken with the macro. The red tree light serves to give the image a warm Christmassy glow.

December 19th, 2009  |  Posted in Uncategorized  |  No Comments »

Still enjoying the sunshine

Author: Adrian

Well we are now 10 days into our break in the USA. The weather has been pretty much wall-to-wall heat, with temperatures hitting 35C each day and it feels it too. They are threatening the weather to get cooler come the weekend, but who knows? We’ve had a good thunderstorm which was preceeded by loads of electrical storms in the skies. Looked awesome but did nothing to break the heat and humidity.

We’ve not blogged as much this holiday, mainly because we’ve done nothing special. We’ve spent much more time in the villa relaxing – chilling by or in the pool. We’ve been shopping to the outlets and Florida Mall, and we’ve wandered in and out of Walt Disney World as the mood has taken us.

Today we went to Sea World. Not been there since January 2008 and since then a new roller coaster has been spawned – Manta. Linda sampled the pleasures this coaster has to offer three times, including a trip on the front. This coaster you lie down on – the seat rotates so you are hanging down with your head facing forwards, it then throws you through a series of twists and turns and some pretty serious G-forces. Sounds delightful, I got some good pictures of it though.

The shows at Sea World haven’t changed much – although we did mourn (make that chuckle at) the passing of the Budweiser Taste Experience. Now Sea World has been sold this show is cancelled it seems, but hey ho – Bud doesn’t have taste anyway.

Thursday promises to be entertaining. In the morning we are booked on the Segway Around the World tour at Epcot. This is a 2 hour tour where we get shown how to ride a Segway two-wheeled personal transport gadget, then get a guided tour of the World Showcase on them. Should be fun! In the evening we are going to the Magic Kingdom for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. Again, we’ve never been to one of these evening soiree’s at the Magic Kingdom, so will be another new experience. In between we plan to return to the villa and make use of the pool.

Its 11pm here, and we are sitting under the lanai by the pool. Its gorgeous, but getting late and we have to be up in time tomorrow to get to Epcot. The best pictures we’ve taken so far can be found on Facebook, for those of you without access (where have you been in the social networking revolution?!) you can click here to see them.

October 15th, 2009  |  Posted in Travel  |  No Comments »

And … RELAX!

Author: Adrian

Its been a mental month or so recently. We’ve both been way too busy with work and other stuff, and on top of that have been snowed under with a lot of Flying Club work. In one way, this little holiday came at a really bad time. But in many other ways, an ideal time.

This holiday was intended to look for a villa to buy in the USA, but the exchange rate has taken another plummeting and the house prices haven’t fallen by enough to make economic sense, so we decided to just come out and relax. No flying planned, lots of days by the pool and a bit of Disney as well.

We flew out to Orlando on Sunday and are once again staying in Brusons Retreat on Cumbrian Lakes. Arriving on Sunday evening (an hour late thanks once again to the Bearded Pullover) it was great to be able to come to somewhere we knew that was very smart, clean and relaxing. A quick trip to the local supermarket to get some essentials and we were set.

The first two days of our break have been spent chilling out. Both mornings we just relaxed by the pool and in the sun, then ambled off to do some shopping in the afternoon.

On Tuesday evening we decided to head into Epcot for the International Food and Wine Festival. Held around the Showcase Lagoon this is basically lots of small stalls selling food samples from all over the world. There are about 24 stalls in total, selling food from Wellington (NZ) through to Buenos Aires (Argentina). We had some empanadas from Argentina, and some Pot Stickers from China. On top of the food there are lots of local wines and beers to be tried. Linda had a Samuel Adams Cream Stout to try, but at $6 a pint its a bit steep. Didn’t seem to stop many people being a bit bladdered around the Lagoon though. We skipped Illuminations this time and wandered off for an ice cream sundae to finish the evening at one of the Disney hotels near Epcot.

Today we’re off to the Magic Kingdom for our first full day in a theme park. You can tell we’re getting old though – we aren’t leaving the villa until lunchtime whereas a few years ago we’d have been in the park for rope drop!

October 7th, 2009  |  Posted in Travel  |  No Comments »

Space – the final frontier

Author: Adrian

Its been active in the skies these last few days. The International Space Station is once more visible in the skies at night, and as it nears completion is becoming ever more visible – to the point now that a pass during the day may be visible too. This week I’ve attempted (and failed miserably) to get some shots of the ISS passing over Milton Keynes – Tony Crowe was rather more successful and his picture can be seen here.

On top of that NASA have been attempting to launch the Space Shuttle Endeavour to the ISS for another mission to install part of a Japanese lab. Monday and Tuesday the missions were scrubbed with 9mins left on the countdown clock, but last night was successful and Endeavour successfully launched from the Kennedy Space Center at 23:03 UK time for her 16 day mission.

We watched the launch on NASA TV, and I happened to notice that the trajectory of Endeavour would put her somewhere near the UK. Working on nothing more than a hunch we wandered out into the back garden at about 23:20 and looked west…

…and immediately spotted two bright fast moving dots on the horizon. One was bright white and heading roughly west to south-west, the other had a much more orange tint to it and wasn’t moving as fast and moving away. Both dots were visible intermittently, probably due to cloud and we lost sight of them after about 30 seconds.

The bright white dot was Endeavour, we are certain. And that makes the orange one the external fuel tank, which had disconnected a few minutes before and would have been dropping back into the Earth’s atmosphere where it would burn up.

We saw Atlantis launch from the Kennedy Space Center in October 2002. We were along the banks of the Banana Creek River on the KSC property, about 7 miles from the launch pad. That was an awesome experience, and one we hope to be able to see again before the Shuttle’s reach the end of their service life. But to see the Shuttle pass over Milton Keynes just 20 minutes from blast off at Kennedy – now that was special.

July 16th, 2009  |  Posted in General, Life  |  No Comments »

Back in Blighty

Author: Adrian

Blinkin eck, its as warm here as it was in Cannes and Cagliari!!!

We’ve arrived safely home, the vac pump while intermittently warning us of its impending failure remained serviceable throughout the flight. The aircraft has been abandoned at the hangar for the engineers to replace the pump and figure out why we were using a litre of oil every 4 hours (that is high for almost any aircraft..!)

We had a great trip, saw lots of new places and experienced some very different flying: Italian airspace and mountains were two big new things, but also the whole idea of doing a long trip. We did about 10hrs flying in the end, which is what we expected.

Linda is back to work tomorrow, a day early to recoup some leave. Apparently I’m off to Tesco. Got the pictures from the last leg of the journey to put online too, I’ll do that in the morning as my body thinks its almost midnight and I’ve been up since 7am Cannes time!

July 2nd, 2009  |  Posted in Flying, Travel  |  No Comments »

Nearly home

Author: Adrian

I started typing this at 3000ft over the town of Sézanne east of Paris. Linda is at the controls and we are making good progress, the weather is cloudy but not threatening.

Our first flight from Cannes to Lyon was glorious, up at 8500ft over the western side of the Massif Central. Linda flew this leg and landed very nicely at Bron, the home of Norbert Dentressengle’s Citations. Landing fee was a mere €18.

I then flew to Troyes. Compared to previous flights this was very boring – no high ground and no airspace issues. It got exciting landing at Troyes – no ATC, speak French only! Somehow we managed and got parked up outside the terminal.

The good run with the arcraft is over though. Already contending with higher than normal oil usage, we now have a dodgy vacuum pump. If it fails it’s not the end of the world, we lose a couple of instruments but we would like to keep them working ideally. We’ve spoken to te engineers who are happy for us to continue, so we shall.

We are now in Le Touquet where we’ll head into town for a late lunch. Linda will have done her flying for the day after landing at Le Touquet so I’m sure she will have a last slurp of la biere francaise.

We’ll then launch for our final leg, back to Cranfield. We should be landing at Cranners just before closing time and then it’s straight to the hangar for the aeroplane and home for us!

July 2nd, 2009  |  Posted in Flying, Travel  |  No Comments »

Where next?

Author: Adrian

After returning to shore we set about finding an Internet cafe, all the while scouring the air for free wifi. Sadly the French are savvy to protecting wifi so we stuffed ourselves into a small shop with old PC’s to check the weather.

We had two ideas in mind. The weather looks promising for Thursday but more marginal for Friday and Saturday with heavy showers and possible thunderstorms over the UK and northern France.

Idea 1 was the least favourable but infinitely more sensible option of flying home all the way tomorrow. This would mean about 4 1/2 hrs in the Mooney with stops at Lyon Bron, Troyes and Le Touquet to change seats. A lot of flying but doable especially in good weather and with an autopilot. Lunch would be either in Troyes or maybe a late lunch in Le Touquet depending on how we got on.

Idea 2 was to fly as far as Paris. Linda would fly to Lyon Bron then I would squeeze the Mooney onto the 600m runway at Lognes east of Paris. From there it’s relatively easy to get a train west to Paris, and east to Disneyland. This meant finding a reasonable hotel somewhere, something we couldn’t do. It also left us flying home on Sunday and rather at the mercy of the Weather Gods. If the showers were slow to clear we’d have been, as Bender in Futurama would put it, boned.

So we’ve gone for option 1. The Mooney is pleasantly cool in flight, which surprised me, and if we’re flying we cant be walking miles coz my feet have had enough! We’ve got an 8am taxi tomorrow to fleece, sorry, TAKE us to Cannes Airport and we’ll start our trek northwest.

So the UK beckons for us again. It’s been a great trip, we’ve seen loads and experienced lots of different flying. But I’ll be glad when I hear a British ATCO again and see the white cliffs – always a welcoming sign.

Regarding photos, not got the Siena ones onward up yet due to the fact that obtaining wifi here in the hotel in Cannes involves selling body parts. I’ll upload them as soon as we get home – they’re all sorted, just need some wifi to use!!!

July 1st, 2009  |  Posted in Flying, Travel  |  No Comments »

Cannes

Author: Adrian

Turns out the hotel we booked in the little internet cafe is just outside Cannes, inland by about a mile. Still, it’s handy for the bus to town and best of all it’s free as I used the last of my Priority Club points.

After a brief mid-day siesta (something the Europeans have dead right) we walked down the hill into town.

For all the expensive yachts in the Vieux Port, Cannes is really just a seaside town – albeit an expensive one with posh shops and the like. The beaches are nice and the views inland up toward the mountains are stunning.

These mountains though had some pretty forbidding clouds brewing over them, making us glad we weren’t flying any later. We did have some rain in the evening but nothing like what fell in Siena. It did nothing to dampen the heat though.

Initially we thought to walk back to the hotel to work off dinner, but got sidetracked with a visit to the panoramc views available from the Castre. To get here we walked up narrow steep streets with restaurants on either side, all of which looked delicious. It was very steep, but the views at the top were worth it.

It was at the top we noticed the first mural, a painting of a pirate bursting out of a large house. Back at the bottom near the bus stop we saw an even better fresco, this time with lots of famous characters from film – Mickey, Minnie, R2D2, Batman and the original joker to name but a few. All were painted on the side of a building as if they were on various balconies, very effective and realistic.

Today is our full day in Cannes. We had pondered taking a boat trip into Monte Carlo but our slovenly awakening meant we missed the sailing by about an hour. Instead we took a ferry boat to Ile Sainte-Marguerite, a 15-min boat ride south of Cannes.

The Ile is home to the prison that the man in the iron mask was held captive. We’ve spent most of the day wandering the island, visiting the fort and having lunch on a rocky beach before exploring some rock pools.

I’m typing this overlooking a marina on the south of the island. It’s gorgeously warm and a sea breeze is keeping the humidity down. Soon we will venture back into town, we need to find an Internet cafe to work out what to do tomorrow – either had back to Cranfield early and beat the storms or stop somewhere like Paris and spend the weekend, returning on Sunday. We shall see.

Pictures from Cannes can now be found here!

July 1st, 2009  |  Posted in Travel, Uncategorized  |  No Comments »

Third flight – Siena-Cannes

Author: Adrian

Last night there must have been another big storm in Siena. We missed it but everywhere was soaked as we arrived. We wisely chose to skip a tour round the Piazza. The rain last night though has led to fog this morning. The visibility on the journey to the airfield was down to 500m or less with low cloud, but it was lifting as we arrived.

We climbed away from Siena northwesterly. Plans to overfly the town first were scuppered by low cloud over the town but we climbed clear of the clouds, initially towards Pisa up to 3000ft then further to 8500ft.

Problem one: Pisa wouldn’t let us overfly the airfield, even right up high. So we hastily planned a route to the east of Luca. We remained clear of clouds the whole way – there were some biggies, but they all seemed to be just off our track which was a plus.

Problem two: Milan Information. In France and the UK the “info services” are very useful. Here it was a disaster. It took me a dozen calls to even be acknowledged, the controller kept going ape at people stepping on each other. He cleared another Brit direct to La Spezia then told him he was in the La Spezia danger area. We were trying to get clearance through that danger area but gave up.

Calm was restored when we were handed to Genoa and we were quickly cleared on exactly the route we requested. We were even handed over to Nice.

This is where it went a bit wrong for me. I left the descent a bit late, then didn’t trim the aircraft right for the final. The result was a quick bounce followed by a go-around, something I’ve not done in years. Oh well, the second approach was fine.

We fuelled up on arrival in Cannes then moved the aircraft gingerly onto the grass parking. There don’t seem to be any formalities here, we were let through a gate and caught a cab to our hotel.

The pictures from this leg of the trip are here!

June 30th, 2009  |  Posted in Flying, Travel  |  No Comments »