Post PPL Adventure
 

Hi all,
Looking for some input and suggestions for a foray into Europe this summer. A friend and me are renting a 172 and heading from Barton to the continent. Plans at present are sketchy, but we initially thought about just scooting along northern France, but i`m fancying spreading our wings (no pun intended), and seeing what else is out there.
We have the plane for roughly 9 days...so allowing for a few days for bad weather and that, where could we get to realistically in that time....Italy, Spain, Morocco?? We are more restricted by flying time, to about 25 TT or so....
Any suggestions more then welcome.

Hi there, we took our 150 from Tatenhill down to the Med (Beziers) a couple of years ago as we also wanted to spread further than a trip through Normandy, though that is a nice flight especially if you stop off at somewhere like Alderney.

We stayed at Bergerac (in the Dordogne valley) for two nights, routed there and back via Bournemouth, Cherbourg and Cholet. I think we did 22 hours in total though there was a couple of local trips in there aswell. They were great at Bergerac and didn't even charge us for parking. All the places we visited we were treated very well and they couldn't do enough for us, I thoroughly recommend the experience.

You can also enjoy the experience of relatively empty skies, though ATC tend to speak to other French pilots in French so perhaps brush up on a few key aviation phrases before you go.

Cannes is a great GA destination. From there, I did a day trip to Lucca in Northern Tuscany. The flight along the Cote d'Azur past Monaco is fantastic and Genoa airspace easy to transit.

Here are some impressions of various French airfields that I wrote up a couple of years ago.

The world's yer lobster ... 12 hours or so in a 172 will get you from Leeds to Budapest (via Prague) and back : with the other 12 hours you could throw in all sorts of interesting diversions.

Have fun - it's what this game is really all about !

FF :ok:

I´d keep going down along the atlantic coast of France and into Spain. There you get great scenery, relatively quiet airspace and reasonable landing charges.

Furthermore as the airports (except the few private strips) are run by the same company Aena, you can easily plan a tour and change plans without lots of other work.

Should the weather on the Atlantic get too windy or cloudy, the Med is only three hours or so away or you could nip into Madrid (Cuatro Vientos) or Barcelona for some sightseeing. Plus Morocco is a definate possible from there, I know nothing about it myself but theres one or two 172 pilots around who would recommend it.

Have a great trip.

Out of interest, how much is that costing you ?

Is through a share, so its £££ cheaper then through club hire.. Not sure of the exact wet rates though..........

Thanks for all the useful information and pointers. We have decided to keep it "realtively" simple for our first jaunt into European airspace. So have decided on loop down the east (via clamency), then a few days on the south coast before heading across to La Rochelle and up to normandy, before heading back to blighty.

BTW - Has anyone gone from Northern France to the Isle of Scily....is that wise or not given the blue stuff below? It would make a nice loop, but not sure how long it would be from mainland France.