Belgium with RFK. Day 4: What good are wings, without the courage to fly

It was raining in Ostend on the morning of our departure.

We flew IFR, and hoped to see the sun by reaching our intended FL90.

But the top of the cloud mass was higher, and we mostly flew through the clouds. Sometimes there was an “opening” and it was like looking into another universe, with something different going on there. Then the cloud mass would become denser again, locking us in our own, “OY-IDB world”.

Because of the weather, we flew via Groningen in the Netherlands this time as well. It was Sunday, and many people were hanging out on the sunny terrace in the airport’s restaurant:

It was +23C in Groningen; none of us expected such high temperatures, but we enjoyed it. We took a table with the view to the Per’s aircraft parked on apron, and I took this photo of Carsten – what a place to relax in between the flights!

We all ordered a vegetarian sandwich with egg, avocado, mustard, and grilled portobello – it was very good, we recommend. Drinking coffee later, we monitored on the flightradar24 app the other three aircraft from our group.

After a couple of hours it was time to leave. We waved to OY-TFK, the first one from the rest of our group to arrive, when taxiing from apron:

And said goodbye to Gronningen/Eelde airport:

Our second flight was also IFR. There wasn’t much to see, and Inge-Merete took a nap. I opened my laptop and did sorting of pictures from the day. Then suddenly some clouds appeared on the horizon. We wondered how far away they were, and how tall their top was:

When we got closer, we realised how big they were. And under the inversion layer there was at least as much, as that clearly visible part over it.

We had been ordered to descend, but decided it was better to go over, or through the top, and were granted permission to maintain our flight level for crossing the weather.

We were excited, and hoped there wasn’t any embedded CB waiting for us in that cloud mass. All, except Per of course, had their phones ready for filming and photographing.

That flight through the clouds resulted for me in a couple of hundreds photos – so spectacular the nature was!

The turbulence was very light, and only added a positive experience to our excitement.

Near Roskilde, our home airport, the yellow fields of rapeseed welcomed us home:

“The Aviator” felt comfortable at home, coming back from this wonderful trip to Belgium:

We had a chat over a (non-alcoholic) drink in our club, and talked about where we could fly to next year during the Great Prayer Day holidays. The rest of our group was far behind, and though we wanted to hear about their flying experiences that day – some of them flew VFR – we decided to go home.

And I would like to finish this post with the quote from Atticus I saw on a menu card in one of the cafes in Belgium:

Many thanks to Poul, Morten, Birgit, Pernille, Inge-Merete, Carsten, Kristian, Hans, Per and Ejnar for the great company on this tour!