Bertie's Travelogue Part 3 - Lisbon to Algiers

I think you left me last time sampling the delights of downtown Lisbon before a short hop to the southern Portuguese city of Faro. I have to say that my journeys through Europe have never taken me there before (Portugal, that is) and I've yet to meet anybody who doesn't say what a wonderful place it is.

Faro itself has both Arab and Roman ruins although the Moors were the predominant rulers until it became part of Portugal as we know it. In 1596, the Earl of Essex (complete with chain mail white stilettos and Von Dutch logo'd shield) popped in on his way to the Crusades and basically nicked the entire library of the Bishop of Faro. These books are still in the Bodleian at Oxford. Apart from the obvious holiday potential of the Algarve, Faro has one of the biggest annual motorcycle festivals in Europe so break out the AC/DC music, leap on the Honda 50 and ride!

In a bid to make this whole travelogue/blog more interesting I have decided I can combine another of my loves and post both a modern and an older example of each country's paper currency (for those of you who know my feelings on the Euro (see here), the modern versions will be pre-Euro in the relevant countries).

Here then are Portugal's representatives for your viewing pleasure. As always, kudos and thanks to Ron Wise for his wonderful banknote database. I will try and show similar notes to ones I also have in my own collection but, to save hassle, I will link to Ron's examples.

OK, now for the one I'd been looking forwad to - Gibraltar. As I said the other day, it's an interesting landing here as, due to the ongoing issue of sovereignty, the Spanish refuse to allow aircraft arriving at Gibraltar to overfly the Spanish Coast on final approach which makes for difficult aviation procedures. Basically, this means a very tight turn before lining up to a very short final approach on runway 09 ........oh. and try not to hit the big rocky lump!

It was actually quite a simple descent and landing in a single engine aircraft although I think I'll wait a while before I try it in a "heavy". The one thing I remember above all else when I was there in my late teens/early twenties was walking off a palm-lined street full of burnous-clad Arabs into a Spar grocers which might just as well have been in dear old Blighty. Having just come over from Morocco, it was the strangest experience but also very comforting to see Marmite, Rich Tea and Corn Flakes!

Of course, Gibraltar uses Pounds sterling and here are both old and new.

Pausing only to stock up on Caramacs and Tizer, I set off for Algiers which is basically a flight routed to Malaga, then over to the north coast of Africa and then follow the camel tracks along the beach.


I thought the beach seemed a tad large as I flew along and then realised I was actually gazing down some 9000' and seeing the northern edge of the Sahara! At last, I was out of Europe and into exotic and I wondered anxiously just how many carpets I would be persuaded to buy once I reached Algiers.

Memories of Morocco and Tunisia flooded back. I spent the princely sum of £108 for a fortnight's holiday at a place called Camp Africa in Asilah as a young man and had the dubious pleasure of living in a mud hut with no electricity, no furniture and merely a mattress on the floor. Having said that, it was a great time and I have many strange memories of that holiday. I can't actually remember doing a drunken dance with a couple of cobras in a Tangier night club but have the photos to prove it, I can remember one guy going a bit doolally and the only way to calm him (the local medical authorities not being interested) was to go and fill his mud hut with calming herbal smoke; needless to day, there was no shortage of volunteers. I can also remember that there was only water available in the camp between 8pm and 10pm. With the incidence of Arab tummy being quite high, I'll leave you to imagine the state of the communal bogs at about 7pm!!

Anyway, I digress. Founded by the Phoenicians, Algiers has historically been one of the main ports of the Mediterranean as well as the main centre for piracy. In 1511 the Spanish occupied an island in the city's harbor, but they were driven out when Barbarossa captured Algiers for the Turks. Algiers then became a base for the Muslim fleet that preyed upon Christian commerce in the Mediterranean. The French came along in 1830 and stayed around until 1962 when the armed struggle for independence, led by the OAS, resulted in a free Algeria.

The airport at Algiers isn't the most well-kept but it's flat and there was a fuelling depot so, leaving some links of 1924 and 1996 currency as a souvenir of Biggles Bassett, I once more took to the air for a shortish hop back up to the island of Palma de Mallorca.

This is me on the way there (kill the music first)!

A Grumpy Old Man's Guide to Christmas

Christmas, that time beloved by all small children, shopkeepers, credit card companies and admirers of Carry On films will soon be upon us. This small offering seeks to provide some insight into that overblown, lumbering and unstoppable machine that is the festive season.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas. I love the interesting gifts that prove desperation can turn sensible people into panic-stricken buying machines (and special thanks there to Auntie Jean for those 12 different small pots of “Jams of the World” - a present I shall always treasure).I love the naïve hope that this year I will eat my Christmas lunch with its 7 varieties of overcooked vegetables, starter, pudding, various alcoholic beverages and STILL have room for cold meats, pickles etc as I watch the joyously festive murder/tragedy/catastrophe served up by the scriptwriters of EastEnders. I love the assortment of gaily coloured greetings cards from people met once on holiday many years ago with the brief note telling me that someone I have never met has had a baby and how festive Worksop looks at this time of year. Most of all though, I love the build-up to Christmas..........

Like the first cuckoo heralding Spring, the Advent Calendars melting gently in the September heat provide the first glimpse of that well-oiled machine, designed to rid us of our money, our sanity and any goodwill. You know then that the Christmas timetable is upon us and shortly, nothing in the supermarket is where it should be as all the everyday items have been pushed into small, dark corners to make way for far more important purchases like Mint Thins, cocktail cherries and cheesy footballs. Gift Catalogues as large as telephone directories crash through the letterbox reminding us to panic that there are only 2 months left to bankrupt ourselves, children start to compile the first few volumes of their Present List and we all utter those immortal words…. “This year, I am going to be really organised and get everything out of the way to save the last-minute panic”

Of course, it never happens. By early November, shopping centres see vast multitudes of people, secure in their smugness, wandering from shop to shop looking for that special present. By the end of the day, you see those same people, defeat and tiredness etched across their faces, clutching several rolls of wrapping paper, 2 calendars and a novelty kitchen implement trudging dejectedly back home.

And so it goes on. Week after week, we gradually whittle down the list with the main expenditure being the cost of car parking tickets (courtesy of those extorting bastards known as NCP) and headache tablets. The joy of hearing When a Child is Born in every shop we fight our way around is only slightly increased by the sadistic pleasure derived from thinking of the poor sods that work there and have to listen to it all day. All this is guaranteed to send us into a fit of homicidal rage and even a turkey seems to have a better outlook on life.

As the Day looms ever closer, we get to dread the sound of the front door bell and the 4 children standing there singing the first line of We Wish You a Merry Christmas before the youngest is pushed forward for their just reward.

By now, we have developed a siege mentality and are planning the final food shop. Cupboards are bulging with sweets, savouries, cakes, biscuits, chocolate and every conceivable relish, chutney and pickle so it’s only the fresh food left to get. Now this is where the strange quantum physics of food requirements kicks in. It goes something like this:

Allow 4 times the normal amount of food consumed per person and add sprouts. Multiply this by the inversely proportioned ratio of bodily sounds and functions as we sleep through the afternoon of Christmas day and subtract the amount of sherry consumed by any pensioners present. Failing this, just grab a shopping trolley and fill it with whatever you can find left on the shelves.

At last, you get to that wonderful moment on Christmas Eve when there is no more that can be done. This is that special time when one can sit down and relax, casting an appreciative eye over the decorations dropping from the walls where the Blu-Tack failed yet again and thanking all Gods that Noel Edmonds is no more a traditional part of Christmas Morning. Christmas Eve is also a good time to go and slip a card into an acquaintance’s letterbox if they haven’t sent you one already – guaranteed to send them into a panic of indecision.

Christmas morning finally arrives; that special time when all the New Year sales are first aired on the box and the summer holidays adverts are tempting us to spend even more money that we haven’t got.

……………………….. OK, I give in, it’s a fair cop. I LOVE the thought of Christmas really. Every year I still look forward to it although I do hate the build-up and the commercialisation. I still think of open fires and children’s laughter, strangers wishing each other a cheerful greeting and happiness and peace. Being with friends and loved ones, remembering the sheer joy that Christmas brings to children and that special air of excitement.

Perhaps that is what Christmas is all about: what is in one’s mind and in one’s heart. You can’t buy Christmas – you can only live it.

Now, where did I put those Easter Eggs…………………..?

Bertie's Travelogue Part 2 - Marseilles to Lisbon

Well, I made it to Marseilles after a fairly uneventful trip down through France.It was a strangely real experience after a few hours at the controls, seeing the blue of the Mediterranean was really quite exciting as I was vectored in for a nice simple landing. Did you know Marseilles is the second biggest city in France as well as the oldest, dating back to 600BC? I didn't stay too long, pausing only for a quick bouillabaisse, a pastis and a look around for Popeye Doyle before climbing back on board and heading off to Sion in Switzerland.

Sion is up in the Swiss Alps and was my first experience of the "interesting" effect mountains have on an aircraft. I was thrown around a fair old bit and was having to keep my eye on both heading and altimeter all the time which,at the end of an almost 3 hour flight was a tad tiring. By now though, I was used to doing 6 things at once and the voices of the Air Traffic Controllers no longer provoked screams of "Alright, in a minute...stop being SO bossy" It was really rather lovely flying into Sion Valley and seeing the strip laid out inviting me to land. Sadly, I was way too high and the kamikaze dive was never going to work so I had to ask Traffic Control to send me round again (incidentally, one 'talks' by bringing up a list of options on screen relevant to any given situation).

A neat landing second time round and I made a big decision - I was going to change my aircraft. The Electra was all very well but was underpowered, cumbersome and, most importantly, had few sophisticated instruments. I wanted a bit more speed and, being a 20th century boy, I also wanted some technological conveniences. Popping into the local Planes 'R Us, I exchanged a few Euros and my trusty Electra for a rather fetching Mooney M20M Bravo with Garmin G1000 glass cockpit. I even managed to get the registration G_BERT!


Basically the G1000 is the bees knees of avionics and takes a lot of mundane tasks from the pilot. The software recommends downloading the actual manuals from the Garmin website in order to familiarise oneself! For me, it means yet another very steep learning curve but also the added benefit of auto-pilot so that I can at least read up on it as I fly.

The trip from Sion across to Bilbao was long, uneventful and boring and certainly the longest leg thus far. Fortunately the Mooney cruises at 150 knots, 25% faster than the Electra and that, combined with auto-pilot, made life easier. I haven't found out whether I can programme course changes into the G1000 yet so I am having to go manual for route changes and changes of airspace responsibility. I don't really mind because otherwise, I could just programme it and then forget the whole thing until journey's end. At the moment, I feel part of it and I'm starting to feel an affinity with the aircraft. I am very lucky that my PC spec. enables me to tweak the performace of the software so that I get a smooth, graphically realistic representation of the whole experience,. although even the aforesid tweaking needs a science degree. For those of a quizzical bent, here is a small part of the 'tweakability'.

I eventually arived at Bilbao (on my last drop of fuel) although sadly I have found no interesting facts about the city apart from the intriguingly designed Guggenheim Museum. Frank Gehry's spectacular edifice boasts to have no flat surface on the entire structure and houses works by Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Vasily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee.

l had a lovely early morning start down to Lisbon.


Weather is pretty good so far and, here's a clever bit; the weather is real-time weather which is downloaded/updated for the region I am in every 15 mins! How impressive is that?

Perhaps I am getting blasé about Europe but I can't help but look forward to getting to more exotic places. After Faro, I have a landing at Gibraltar to which I am really looking forward. I remember visiting there a good few years ago and it's a fascinating chunk of concrete, sort of stuck on the end of the Rock. I seem to recall that the main road runs across it so some poor sod might end up with my tyre marks on his roof.I got to Gibraltar by cattle boat from Tangier in real life so it will be nice to do it the comfortable way.

The fact that I am talking of the future shows that Bilbao to Lisbon was another flat, boring, flight. I soon got fed up with lookingaround at the featureless landscape and ended up reading my Flight Simulator X trainig manual - a mere 722 pages!

Incidentally, I was watching a programme late last night on Sky where round the world flights were mentioned. One guy in the 30s had a 32 hour leg in an aircraft where he was so confined, his shoulders literally touched the sides of the plane. They showed him being helped out after and his head was covered in blood where the turbulence kept smacking it against the cockpit roof. In some small way, I felt a little bit closer to that brave but foolhardy soul and, as I contemplated future journeys across the Pacific, I thought about how the last 80 odd years have seen such changes in our world. There seem to be few daredevils anymore, only the deep remains unexplored and challenges of man and machine no longer abound. People related to those venturers and they became the celebrities of their day. Ordinary men and women lived out their fantasies through such exploits as people today also endeavour to emulate those of celebrity status. Personally, I would rather aspire to Lindbergh than Katona any day.

Flown this blog:

Paris - Marseilles 342 nautical miles
Marseilles - Sian 210 nm
Sian - Bilbao 505 nm
Bilbao - Lisbon 412 nm

Bertie's Travelogue Part 1 - Farnborough to Marseilles

Well, as you peruse this, dear reader, I am cruising gently southwards towards Marseilles, having just passed Avignon (and yes, I did sing it!). My flight from Farnborough to Paris was not without incident, however, as part of the simulation involves pre-flight checks involving switching magnetos, heating pitots, darning the parachute and other sundry tasks. Sadly, there is no documentation so there followed several scenes variously involving total inaction, take off followed by an ominous silence as the engines died or a strangely beautiful ballet as I corkscrewed through the air before splatting into the ground.

After some frantic research and armed with a full list of pre-start, startup, taxiing, take-off, climb-out ....yawn .... cruise, descent...zzzzzzz..., approach, landing etc etc checklists, I finally soared off into the wild blue yonder. Pootling off southwards, the nice man at Air Traffic Control passed me onto Shoreham ATC where I was admonished for being at the wrong height as I dropped down to see where I was born. Up I rose and said a fond farewell to Blighty whilst playing "We'll Meet Again" on my Dansette Junior.


I got a bit muddled for a while and ended up over Deauville but finally saw the gleaming dome of the Basilica of Sacré Coeur and, more importantly, the lights of Orly airport. Feeling rather smug at my navigational prowess, I decided to video my landing as part of this blog (another clever part of Flight Simulator X) and post my triumphant touchdown. Needless to say, my landing was roughly similar to a kangaroo on a trampoline which is why I will just show you a nice picture of Paris!


I refilled my trusty Electra and filed my next flight plan before once more taking to the skies en route to Marseille - a city pretty high on my list of must-visit places.

Incidentally, by sheer coincidence, after I mentioned Amelia Earhart in the last blog there was a Sky documentary on the lady that very same day! How spooky was that? Apparently, there was a very strong rumour that she didn't actually disappear whilst circumnavigating the globe through aircraft failure but was captured by the Japanese and accused of conspiring with the US government by using her flight as an excuse to spy on the strength of the Japanese military forces. The contention was that, eventually, she was summarily executed. If you want a read - yer tiz!

Toodle pip!

Around the World in 80 Flights

Recently, I decided the time was ripe for a foray into global circumnavigation. Having checked my air miles and realising that, even if I flew really quickly, 57 miles would be insufficient ,I had to settle for a virtual trip and this has now been planned. Flying a 1937 Lockheed Electra 10E, the intention is to start from Farnborough and, hopefully, end up back there 80 flights later.


Details are as follows:

• The entire journey covers a staggering 43,000 miles across the planet
• Over 60 countries are either visited or flown over during the course of the journey
• The entire trip will take approximately 400 hours to complete
• The journey includes crossing both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans
• The northernmost point of the route is Sondre Stromfjord in Greenland, whilst the southernmost point is Darwin in Australia

Naturally, I may well not do it over the next few weeks but it seems like a pretty cool thing to say I have flown around the world in real time. I shall accordingly keep a journal of the trip and post the occasional blog detailing my adventures and also a few salient (or totally irrelevant) facts about the areas over which I have flown. I am mindful of some of my predecessors like Earhart, St Exupery & Glenn Miller, all of whom disappeared during flights, and am therefore appreciative of any glowing tributes before I disappear so that I can read them!

At the moment, I am hurriedly studying the vagaries of Air Traffic Control, flight planning and how to pee out of the window of a twin engined aircraft at speed. I have radios and people keep telling me where to go (nothing new there then) but up until now I have, to be honest, been more of the school of "aim for where you're going and hope for the best". The first leg is a short trip of 243.8 nautical miles to Paris Orly and below is the flight plan - 9 changes of heading and Bonjour Paree! I'm currently struggling with vectors, frequencies and even what call sign to have - Bravo Echo Romeo Tango six nine?
It's really quite weird planning it all as it's now taking on some strange reality and it'll be interesting to see if it actually feels like I'm crossing the Equator, gazing down at the landing strip at Mogadishu or flying over the Earth's smallest nation (Nauru - 8 square miles!). No doubt we shall see.