Flight of the Robin

The Robin 2160 is a sports aircraft, available for hire at the Cornwall Flying Club on Bodmin Airfield near Cardinham, and that's where we went on the Tuesday and Thursday of our holiday week.

Our first visit was to give Chris a check-out with the instructor, Phil, but first we had to find the place, hedgerows brushing the sides of our car along the steep and twisting back roads between the A39 and the A30, via the little village of Blisland, driving over narrow bridges and a couple of cattle grids to cross a corner of Bodmin Moor on the way and having to stop and ask the way at St Breward, so that we arrived fifteen minutes late. Nobody complained; it was a lovely ride.

For our second visit we allowed more time en route and then had time for some lunch in the club's Windsock Bar and Café. My mother sat here worrying about us while we flew, but after our flight it was our turn to worry about her because she had given us the slip by taking herself off for a walk in our absence and was nowhere to be seen. I found her later on the airport road, wearing her hearing aids so that she could hear the larks singing, she said.

The weather conditions for our flight were ideal, Chris flying us up the coast as far as Bude, with a view of the GCHQ satellite dishes at Cleave Camp, then in a lazy circle around "our" village of Marhamchurch and so back down the coast, following the line of cliffs past the places we had been visiting at ground level, back over the Camelford windfarm to the fields near Bodmin, the views through the Robin's domed windows magnificent in every direction. England being reduced to a thin strip of land in Cornwall we could see south to Plymouth harbour and the Channel coast as well, as we homed in towards the field.