Post 5, Fog in channel but continent not cut off

After a number of false starts and the odd not wholly kosher promise Alpha Charlie finally set off to get through a narrow window of grim but not disastrous February weather in France on the first leg of her 18,000nm trip to Africa and back.
I got up feeling as close to suicidal as someone as obdurate as me can feel when the phone rang. Deus ex machina. John McGwynne, a ferry pilot and Cirrus instructor I'd never met who'd seen my distress flare sent the previous midnight called at 8:30 am to say he was free. Pilots are like that. Well, most pilots. Apart from the ones with Very Big Watches. John has 2300 hours in the bank, an instrument rating and a nice, open manner which suggested caution and experience and nothing to prove. Sometimes you just go with your gut. And mine was telling me this meeting was what Karl Jung called Synchronisity.or good karma. John is one of the good guys. Not, as some pilots can be, serial willie-wavers.
We meet an hour and a half later at Cranfield,  Then everything that could go wrong did. Flat battery; jump start; flat again; another jump start; avionics died one by one and the piece of paper we'd scribbled the flight plan on in haste (Rule One broken) was spun away by a nearby King Air starting up. We eventually took off half an hour late, IFR flight plan shot anyway, but with nice egg and cress sarnies from Cafe Pacific and some refreshing Cranberry juice on board.

Layers of stratus cloud over the channel, more muscular stuff over France but not quite CBs, moderately helpful French traffic controllers who seem to need to be spoon fed flight plans and are thrown if you want to divert. Mustn't grumble though. They produced the goods, warming us off Limoges and Poitiers and Toulouse (our hoped-for destination) which we would have reached after dark anyway which I didn't fancy. Weaving and dodging cloud at between 6-7000 feet, auto-pilot behaving itself. Engine leaned to around 8.5US gallons an hour. Purring along. I love Alpha Charlie. And I think she loves me. Shucks.

We eventually plumped for Tours, a semi-military airport. John took her into the Instrument Landing glideslope (one day I too shall be a grown-up pilot who can do that) and handed her over on finals. Greaser of alanding  if I say so myself. As we stepped onto the Apron 4 fast jets..Mystere or Raffale or somesuch, played about over the airfield like over-excited puppies chasing each other. No doubt a fly-past in our honour. Incredibly helpful airport staff. Handshake, fuel, hotel at air crew rates, taxi. I was wearing my gardening/flying suit so maybe that helped. ( Tomorrow Toulouse then Corsica and Corfu where Sam, our gruppenfuehrer, I suspect (and hope) will announce that flying a bunch of over excited penioners and some of their wives into the jaws of a revolution in Egypt while everyone else is headed for the exit may not be such a good idea not least for his business. ATC of the day is a joint award : Farnborough Lars and Paris Information. Man of the match is John. Thank you. Merci. And good night.