Planes, Trains and Automobiles - the Transport Trifecta!

[aloysius_bear]

Our lovely friend, Hugh, offered to take us to Guernsey for the day in a prop plane he has access to, and we jumped at the chance. We had an early start, driving to Duxford airfield to meet Hugh and inspect the plane:

We had to change our flight plan because it turned out none of the humans had remembered to bring their passports, and Hugh was also a bit worried about the weather over Guernsey, so we planned to head to Newquay instead.

There were lots of checks to carry out, so I took the opportunity to examine the interior. The actual seats were a lot more comfortable than the one I tried:

I doublechecked the instruments to make sure everything was in order, and declared us ready to take off:

We were soon in the air, enjoying wonderful views from about 2000 feet. My primary human was particular pleased when we passed over Oxford and she could identify several landmarks from her time there:

It was after this that things started to go awry, as the weather turned against us, and it became dangerous to try and fly through, under, or over the heavy clouds and rain. We tried various places to land, and eventually ended up at Henstridge, a small airfield in the middle of nowhere in Somerset. Hugh did a brilliant job of remaining calm, and got us safely on the ground. We were all ready for lunch by this point, and the airfield turned out to have an excellent cafe. The weather continued very changeable, and there were reports of a thunderstorm over Duxford, so we decided in the end to abandon the plane at Henstridge and travel back to London on the train.

Our transport problems were not yet over, though, as our train terminated unexpected at Woking, and the next one was then considerably delayed by signalling trouble:

Once we finally arrived back in London, my primary human and I took the opportunity to head home, but Hugh and my secondary human still had to travel to Cambridge and then on to Duxford to pick up the cars (and poor Hugh will at some point have to fly back to Henstridge with someone to pick up the plane).

So, it was a long day, with lots of unforeseen changes to the travel plans, but it was still good fun. The people at Henstridge were very welcoming (they even gave my primary human a bottle of wine to drink while the menfolk were securing the plane), and the company overall was excellent. So we weathered the storm (quite literally) and managed to have a convivial time all the same.