Flemming and I took a taxi from Traben-Trarbach to the airport on Mont Royal. The taxi driver was a young woman. She never heard of that airport. It was probably her first drive – she didn’t know any roads and had to check Google Maps all the time. She drove wrong ways and we had to help her. She was also very afraid of driving on not paved roads and even asked us whether we could walk the last 100 metres, because the road wasn’t good. We assumed her, the road was ok. I think she got a shock when she saw how many cars were at the airport and how lively that place was.
We had the time, and decided to go hiking on Mont Royal and see the the ruins of old fortress.
In the end of 17th century, the French King Louis IV ordered to build a supply fortress on Mont Royal. It was the largest fortification in Europe at that time. The fortress was built in 5 years (1687 – 1692) with the help of around 8,000 forced labourers. The Royal headquarters had place for 12,000 soldiers and 3,000 horses.
Due to the Treaty of Rijswijk, Louis IV had that fortress destroyed in 1698. He was, however, awarded Strasbourg istead. There wasn’t much left, but it was interesting to see and learn about the history of that place.
It was a hot day, and we enjoyed walking in the forest’s shadow. Nice views were everywhere:
Before departing, we had lunch in the Hungarian restaurant located right at the airport, with the view to the runway. Flemming had goulash soup, and said it was good. I had a salad, and it was terrible 🙂
My salad was made of canned (!) vegetables. Several kinds, like canned saurekraut, canned peas, canned carrots and so on. Topped with a couple of fresh letucce leaves and slices of fresh tomato, and then a sea of canned dressing. It was almost disgusting! How can you serve canned food in a restaurant?! Flemming ordered a side salad, and he got exactly the same, just a smaller portion…
In EDRM, you land on runway 36, and you take off from runway 18, no matter what wind direction is. A pilot from the club advised us on the take-off and the flying pattern, we walked the runway and checked it (it was wet in some places after the rain at night), and soon we were ready for departure.
The take-off was as spectacular as landing:
Flemming and I waved goodbye to Tarben-Trarbach where we stayed for 3 nights and had such a good time:
On the radio we heard that 2 aeroplanes on approach for landing in EDRM were rejected landing by the “tower”. They simply didn’t get permission to land and had to fly somewhere else. We didn’t know the reason, but they could had been too heavy for the wet runway that day.
We were going to Ballensted, a place recommended by Boye, a friend from my flying club.
The flight was very challenging. Besides turbulens, there were lots and lots of different aircraft in the air. It was like 10 gliders circling above you, 10 gliders circling on the right, and numerous aeroplanes and helicopters crossing from various directions at different altitudes and with their own speed. We were advised by the air traffic controller right from the beginning of our flight that traffic information service wasn’t available … due to heavy traffic.
I used SkySafe, an app that displays traffic in your vicinity and gives warnings. Three times I had to quickly change both direction and altitude in order to avoid potential collision! It was obvious that those aeroplanes didn’t see me. I didn’t see them either, but I trusted the warnings from SafeSky and took action. I saw the aeroplanes afterwards.
It was a stressful flight. I don’t know how I would manage, if I didn’t have Flemming by my side, with whom we changed controlling our Aeroprakt, and SafeSky – without that app I would had no idea of all that traffic…
The views were otherwise magnificent. With time, all that heavy traffic was left behind, we could relax and enjoy the flight.
Landing in Ballensted, over the road. Sometimes in such places the drivers like to stop their cars and watch you landing over them, which is quite annoying for us, pilots… There were no cars there 🙂
Refuelling after landing was easy, and parking too. Have a look, what kind of aeroplane we had by our side:
We got our cabin with a wonderful view, the car we rented – but we were tired after that demanding flight and didn’t want to drive anywhere.
The airport had a restaurant, and we just went there. I ordered a salad, and I got the same type of canned veggies blended together, topped with lots of industrial dressing! I will never eat in an airport restaurant again! 🙂
Apart from that, it was a great place. Our cabin is in the middle on the photo below, behind the trees. We had a view to landing gliders. On top of the hill (where the red arrow is pointing to) there was an impressive rock formation:
Flemming and I went to experience it. The so-called Gegensteine are an offshoot of the Devil’s Wall, which is well over 20 km long. The rock formations are partly over 50 m high and date back to the Cretaceous period (which started 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago).
There were some man-made steps so that one could climb on top of the formation.
Beautiful views opened up from there. In fact, many people made their way to and from Gegensteine that evening. It is a popular hiking area, with interesting things to explore.
The sun was setting down, and we slowly moved back to our camp.