The day a chill finger tapped my shoulder ...
Wouldn't it be great to have an instrument rating, I used to think. Such as the week we spent in Denham north of London waiting for the weather to clear, or the four extra days on a rainswept Guernsey holiday before we could get VFR clearance out of the zone, or the Jersey holiday we didn't get at all, though that week of low cloud and heavy rain wasn't such a loss.
Many years ago I acquired a Piper Arrow, which is basically a Cherokee GT with retractable gear and constant speed prop. It took quite some time to collect enough moolah to fit the necessary avionics, then even more to train at Oxford and at last attain the coveted IR. Travel became instantly easy, file your flight plan, copy your clearance, climb into the airways and do as you're told. No more fumbling about beneath lowering clouds peering for pinpoints in the smoke and haze, no more IMC delays or cancelled summer holidays, but truth to tell airways flight proved to be a little boring. Except once.
One January day I looked forward to a business trip from Belfast to Birmingham. Met promised me clear departure conditions with cloud increasing across the Irish Sea, becoming a continuous layer 3000ft – FL060, with freezing level 2,500ft. Of course I had learned all about icing on my IR course, and knew it was a Very Bad Thing. But once past the Isle of Man there was nothing over 300ft between me and Birmingham, so I reasoned that I could descend below freezing level if I had to. What could possibly go wrong?