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Ireland 2014 – day 7

Track for the day:

A surprising lack of a hangover had me worried that it would dawn later on but be much worse. As it transpired we were clearly just staring down the road to becoming alcoholics and it never really arrived.

We arrived back at the airfield, settled down with a pot of tea and made our flight preparations for the run over to Scotland.
The shortest run across the water was over the north channel and into Campbeltown. This was an easy decision as we’d never been there before and it was another tick in the book.
All of our flight planning had been done on the fantastic skydemon software but all form submissions, FP’s and GAR’s had all been done using afpex and the online GAR process. This time we decided to try the skydemon option! As far as we know it all worked perfectly, I had a confirmation of our FP and we were ready to go.

We fuelled then plane waved cheerio to the guys in the tower and trundled down the taxiway to the active runway.

Once airborne out of 33 we descended down to the water to follow the lake up to the north west, it was a lovely view bumbling along waving at anyone around as we flew up lough Erne.
Just as we could see boa island the weather to the north looked rotten and as we really wanted to head east that was incentive enough.
So we struck off in a north easterly direction toward Omagh carrying on to the north West of Belfast and out over the east coast.
As we followed the coast round taking in all the beautiful scenery the weather over rathlin island was looking decidedly ropey, now was the time to push out across the drink.
We could see the land from where we were so a quick mag check and away we went.
As we approached the mainland a low lying cloud was covering the entire area at about 800′, even so we took a trip out to sanda island and then cut back n to the north directly overhead Campbeltown. There was no one about so it wasn’t a problem an we took the opportunity to fly down machrihanish bay at low level enjoying the scenery.
We entered downwind for 29 left directly from overhead the golf course and as we turned we could clearly see the tower at the north west end of the airfield. Runway 29 is nearly 2Kms long so I held off and landed nearly at the other end, upon which ATC replied, 180 backtrack turn left at the other end. Excuse me?? Asked for confirmation only t be told exactly the same?? What on earth!
Well, what a dilbert! The GA apron is in fact at the other end of the runway it just isn’t as obvious from the air as the tower….at the opposite end of the runway! Well we certainly had our money’s worth of their Tarmac! 🙂

By now the pack down process was very slick, in no time at all we were standing in the terminal waiting for a taxi.

After a tour around the town including the whiskey shop and distillery we set safely do posited at the doorstop of our hotel! Which just happens to have a very large selection of interesting whiskey.

We were shown to our room which was in the annex ( not sure how much noise they thought we would make 🙂 ) an after the 3 S’s we wandered through the town to see what was about.
We decided in the black sheep pub which is where we spent the remainder of the evening eating and drinking.
Al that remainder was to head back to the ardshiel for a few top up whiskeys 😉

Chris’s photos:

Steve’s photos:

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