Thursday afternoon we left the friendly Midden-Zeeland airport in the Netherlands, and headed for Britain. We were all thrilled to see the iconic cliffs of the chalk coastline from air:
On our way, we passed Belgian and French airspace, and from Calais went straight to Dover over the Dover Strait:
Our first stop was going to be in Brighton city airport (or Shoreham, EGKA) where we were supposed to have a customs clearance for entering the UK. Flying along the coast, we enjoyed the views to the cities, beaches, cliffs…
Hastings Pier, built in 1872:
The Shoreham airfield, our first destination:
We reached it too soon… The airport has an opening hours schedule for each day. There are breaks when no operations are allowed:
While waiting for it to open, we were flying around and taking photos of the nearby places.
When Shoreham opened, it showed up there were dozens of aircraft waiting for that moment! The radio communication was so intense, we couldn’t get through! It was only open for 1 hour, and we needed to get customs and refueling before it would close again. And we also needed to land on time on the next airfield that day! When you are on London Information during a busy time, they would always answer you call saying “OY-9430, you are number 9, stand by, I’ll call you back”. In Shoreham that kind of service wasn’t available, so we had to stay close and try again and again. After about half an hour we succeeded, and got permission to land:
Other aircraft from our group were already parked there, and when Anne and I got to the apron, Jesper told us there wasn’t any police officers to check our passports, and we could leave for the Oaksley Park – our next destination – immediately. The problem was we had to refuel, and there was a queue…
Anne and I managed again, and 3 minutes before the airport would close, we took off.
We were lucky with the weather all the way from Midden-Zeeland in the Netherlands till the Oaksley Park:
At the airfield everybody was happy (photo: Jesper Frøtlund).
We parked our aircraft (photo: Per Andersen), and got a taxi to the RIAT official camp site where we were going to stay for 2 nights.
At the camp, we got our camp-bracelets, and found our tents. From left to right: Anne, Kristjan, Ulrich:
There were 2 tents where we could buy food. It was quite well organized, even a vegetarian dinner was available which I opted for – a wrap with freshly grilled veggies – it was delicious. After dinner there were coffee and non-alcoholic drinks. (Alcohol was available in a separate tent.) From left to right: Jesper, Thorbjørn, Tommy, Per, Henrik, Daniel:
Our first evening in Britain went quickly… A beautiful sunset over the camp:
