nats, 10W and Spitoon, thank you for restoring my confidence a bit.
For the record it was a handover from Newcastle, approximately in the middle of (but above
) the Spadeadam range. I don't have the charts in front of me, but I was doing about 160kts and it was a goodly number of minutes before encountering CA, probably at least 10.
What prompted me to raise this was not so much the delay in granting a clearance, it was an apparent lack of awareness (as it turns out in both directions) of the controllers of the airspace they were operating.
I re-emphasise that I am not criticising, just musing.
But on the Northbound trip it seemed that the controller was, well, unaware that a VFR flight could enter the airspace and on the Southbound I was vectored/cleared through Class A VFR.
On the other hand, I am well aware that controllers are normally validated on relatively small bits of sky, so it would be arrogant of me to assume that they don't know everything that there is to know about that area.
Which is what confused me.
One final bit of emphasis. The controllers were as helpful as they could possibly be, as indeed always are the FISOs and the Edinburgh Zone guys, so I am absolutely not complaining.