After a very quiet evening of rest in the Ibis Styles at LFMT, I was up before dawn on the Sunday morning for the “slog” back to EGTR. As I’d half-expected, there was a lot of mist and fog around as you went further north. I was feeling smug I’d chosen not to overnight in Bron as it was fogged in, but also a bit worried that I end up at Auxerre stuck above fog, with Troyes looking bad as well. I filled out the UK’s GAR and PLF the night before as well.
The standard backup plan here would be an instrument approach somewhere and damn the legalities of not having an IR in an emergency. The fly in the ointment with my aircraft is that half of the radio stack is out at the minute for repairs and what was left in wasn’t working well enough for me to trust it on an approach. Anyway, it was completely clear at Montpellier, so I wrote down a list of airports en-route with 100LL on a Sunday, deciding that I would stop at the last one before the fog if it turned out to be an issue.
In the end, the fog cleared up at about the same rate as I headed north, and completely once north of Lyon, so it was an uneventful (if cold) flight, IFR-esque along an airway at FL85 (LFMT DCT YAQEL DCT LERGA DCT TIS DCT MOU A27 OSKIN DCT LFLA). I’d become very proficient at trimming by this point, so good chunks of the flight were done with the seat full back, right leg stretched into the P2 footwell just keeping a little bit of left rudder on while I looked out the window in class D airspace. I was pretty comfortable with the French FIS transits at this point as well, so “radar contact cleared transit” was the order of the day, none of the R military zones were active, and it was quiet enough that there was no problem asking for the METARs ahead.
SkyDemon route:
My favourite photo of the whole trip:
Maybe 10nm north of LFMT:
Over the Ardeche. This is where my planning had failed me a little. None of this is landable; I went somewhat east of track to stay within range of a survivable valley, but there was about 10 minutes where it was definitely “survive” and not “walk away”. Lesson learned
The Rhone valley covered in fog:
An hour or so in, it’s getting clearer:
LFHP Le Puy – an enroute stopping point, but I could see it was clear ahead and FIS confirmed good weather further north…
…which was good, because this was the view out the other side!
Back in “boring” France, 25nm or so south of LFLA
Parked at Auxerre.
There was a 5 minute or so delay at LFLA while I waited for a commercial departure, but fuelling was easy and I was on my way again fairly shortly thereafter.
How things had changed compared to only three days before. Very much the case now that the LFLA to LFAT flight was “just a quick hop” at 1h40! I’d emailed customs at LFAT while on the ground at LFLA. I’d never been to Le Touquet before so I didn’t know that it’s essentially a “turn up and they’re there anyway” service; there was no mention of my email or reply to it.
Skydemon route, all flown at 2500ft:
Passing LFJS, pointed out to me by Paris Info:
And I must be a rare UK-based pilot to have first seen LFAT from the east:
Final leg. Easy refuel with the Total card, late lunch at the airport restaurant, through customs/immigration and off again. It had been “Francais seulement” on arrival, but the tower had finished lunch when I left.
I did a straight climb up to 6000ft at 700fpm along the coast towards DEVAL, and then across to SANDY and then low-level under the London TMA. I was a bit misled by London Info who wanted me to descend at the FIR boundary, which I did because they sounded so convincing that the TMA started at 5500ft on the FIR boundary. It was only later that I realised they didn’t have radar (unlike in France) and that I was totally fine at 6000ft as I’d thought, as the chart said, and as SkyDemon said. Oh well – no harm done as no engine failure.
The weather was rather better than on the way over, although I did get banged around a fair amount under the LTMA in the boundary layer with 15-20kt winds. The weather had been bad in England in the morning but it had cleared out to the west.
SkyDemon:
Coasting out with England already in sight:
The classic “cliffs of Dover” photo:
Great fun, helped by the weather being almost totally benign. Top tip is “get a Total card”. Next top tip is cancellable hotel bookings on booking.com.
The C172 performed amazingly well – very practical, incredibly easy to fly for hours at a time, comfortable. No faults with it as an airframe. Waving a magic wand, I’d take a bigger fuel capacity, or even a 182/206, but less than half the capital cost for 80% of the speed is nicer, and pays for this trip 50 times over, and that’s not an exaggeration.
Total block times in the end were as below (subtract 0.2 for flight time):
Total time in my logbook is now 87 hours, but I think Mathias Rust made it to Red Square with less!
Lovely write up @Winston ! Thanks.
Winston wrote:
Total time in my logbook is now 87 hours
Wow! What can I say Winston! Kudos to you not just for making the flight, but for doing all the planning, scenarios, wx, paperwork, everything!
The only addition I would advise for long-distance VFR (or IFR, for that matter) flying is a GOLZE ADL for your iPad. Seriously, a priceless bit of kit to be able to see instantly in real time all METARS hundreds of miles ahead.
BTW I bear no affiliation to Mr Golze.
Winston wrote:
Great fun, helped by the weather being almost totally benign. Top tip is “get a Total card”. Next top tip is cancellable hotel bookings on booking.com.
The C172 performed amazingly well – very practical, incredibly easy to fly for hours at a time, comfortable. No faults with it as an airframe. Waving a magic wand, I’d take a bigger fuel capacity, or even a 182/206, but less than half the capital cost for 80% of the speed is nicer, and pays for this trip 50 times over, and that’s not an exaggeration
I do come across people would say you need FIKI, two engines, 3 boots, Cat3b panel, 3 pair of pants, two hats and 4 sun glass to fly such legs between Sep-Apr !
It’s easy to find excuses but at the end of the day all you need is internet (maybe in-flight weather), avgas (BP/Total cards) and flexibility (booking.com) 
The IR may come handy when airspace planning becomes painful
Brilliant trip report Winston 
You planned it right and executed it right, so unsurprisingly it worked out.
It was great to meet you and a pity that you could be there for the Saturday night
Antonio – I think I did over-plan, but it made things easy in the end. Your Pyrenees routes were extremely helpful; thank you. Next time I’ll be able to plan much more quickly now that I know what’s important when picking an airfield (opening hours, fuel availability and whether they reply to an email and/or answer the phone). An ADL device is on the shopping list, but after all the radio stack is fixed up and my IR(R) earned.
Ibra – I did this trip solo and was very willing to stop and turn around at LFAT, LFQB and LFMT. This made a massive difference to any self-imposed pressure. I did have 4G for much of the trip – certainly below 5000ft it’s usually there, but I will say that FIS were very helpful and it was no problem to ask them for weather. On the way down I was offered the weather for Montpellier without asking (“to save you from trying to listen to the ATIS”). IR(R) is now on the bucket list – I wanted to make sure that touring was for me before I started on it, and for sure the outbound Channel crossing has sold me on it.
I do think it’s very important to emphasise the near-perfect weather conditions. This would have been a much more tiring trip with winds and/or clouds, especially as it was hand-flown. Having said that, much of it is “just keep going and fly as normal”.
As I’ve already told you, from my perspective this is a great achievement and proof that even low-time fresh PPL pilot can make remarkable trips.
