Monday, November 29, 2010
Vaucluse - herbs, olives and nougat
Vaucluse
Flying south down the Rhone to Carpentras in Vaucluse displayed the sharpest change in climate and terrain that we've seen. Gone with the alpine terrain was the crist air and orthographic cloud, in their place the wide sun baked plain of the southern Rhone punctuated by granite outcrops. With ninety minutes aloft, we farewelled the thin, lankey, blue eyed, fair haired people living in steep roofed timber chalets and approached the more squat, darker haired mediterranean people in solid, square, earth rendered bulidings with semi cylindraical roof tiles unchanged in design since the roman era. This house amused as a modern example in the vernacular.
This is the only occasion so far on the trip where we have selected destination on the basis of outside air temperature overhead the airfield at one thousand feet. Unless you have a more pressing reason or better information on which to choose your destination, I can highly recommend it. Features of Provence were everywhere. Stepping out of the plane onto the dry hardy vegitation yielded a rich hearbal aroma. There seem to be several local wild variants of rosemary as well as other unknown fragrant herbs.
What is the meaning of this BLUE TREE?
An overnight under the wing in Montellimar was deemed necessary on the basis that they are renown for their nougat and lavendar honey (and their lavendar honey nougat).
Resisting the temptations of the first two nougat shops on the main boulevarde proved prudent as the third was the authentic factory outlet of one of the main local producers with an excellent bin of factory seconds. We stocked up on white and black nougat (which turns out to be a honey toffee with almonds) which represent either end of the afterlife spectrum and are each eaten here at Christmas as two of the traditional 13 desserts that must al be tasted for luck throughout the new year.
Pont D'Avignon made from Profiterole. Excellent.
Resisting the temptations of the first two nougat shops on the main boulevarde proved prudent as the third was the authentic factory outlet of one of the main local producers with an excellent bin of factory seconds. We stocked up on white and black nougat (which turns out to be a honey toffee with almonds) which represent either end of the afterlife spectrum and are each eaten here at Christmas as two of the traditional 13 desserts that must al be tasted for luck throughout the new year.
We were amazed when these three vintage timber light twins (twin engined planes) flew up the valley and made 3 huge circuits, presumably training for approach to a private airstrip next to the public one were were camped at;
Pont D'Avignon made from Profiterole. Excellent.
A architecture exhibition about shipping container buildings contained a photo taken from exactly where my desk was at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London (bottom left, external shot of building in multi colour above that). Small world!
Farewell Annnecy
As a mark of the end of grazing season, when the mountian cattle are brought back down to the vilages for winter, an annual local goat festival is held.
Extreme winds whipped Haute Savoie the day before our departure. Thanks to some quick work by the fire guys at the airport and a few extra tie downs, our plane faired better than this twin's fuselage which below off the stands it had been propped on.
Monday, November 15, 2010
French Alps - Glaciers, altiports and aerobatics
One of the elements that Helen and I love about Annecy is the resident "Captens" formation aerobatics squad. Adam and Marianne display over lake Annecy and at air shows across Europe.
Captens - formation aeros, very impressive flying;
Adam is a top bloke with really interesting background and a ton of flying experience. He invited us to dinner and helped with trip planning. We took the Jabiru up to fly some Chandelles. Adam was interested to see how a Jabiru flys and wanted to make sure that I knew how to turn an aeroplane around in a small space which is important for avoiding terrain in tight alpine valleys.
One clear morning, Adam and I took the Captens Cub up over Chamonix to view Mt Blanc and the glaciers.
Aiguille du Midi;
"In winter, I land there with skis on the cub"
The next two photos are of the mighty Mer de Glace glacier at the north east foot of the Mt Blanc peak. The largest glacier in France, it is several hundred meters deep and moving down the valley at one centimetre an hour. Adam tells me that it is melting at a rate that reduces its depth several feet a year.
This (below) is final approach to the altiport of St Roche, above Sallanche on a high south facing ridge looking out to Mt Blanc and over Megave. Obviously (note granite), there is zero chance of going around are here if you screw up your approach. At about this point shown below, you are fully committed to landing, one way or the other. For this reason there is a special rating required for operation from altiports. The skills required to land at this kind of destination are a large step up from those required to land on long flat low level runways so achieving the altiport rating would be excellent training.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Annecy
Annecy! Yeah yeah yeah!
After a few years of fairly relentless investigation of new places, it was a strange and comforting feeling to be cycling along the same smooth lake shore path that we rode in September last year. Filled with clear bright blue 'rock flour' mineral pure mountain water from the top of Europe, lake Annecy displays quality. We were both thrilled to be back in Haute Savoie and wasted no time in jumping on the bikes to learn the area better (and pick up some of the local cheese Tomme de Savoie, the name sake of Tom, Helen's personal bespoke compartment under her seat in our plane. I, on the other hand, copped the avionics' accelerometers).
We have some friends who moved here a few months ago. Kevin, who Helen met while travelling in NZ 15 years ago and his wife Aurelia. Their son Elliot is 4 and their daughter Emmeline is 2. They invited us to stay with them at their ginormous place up on the hill over town. Awesome. We cooked up a few classic mega cheese fest meals in the local style and had many a laugh.
Elliot is starting to learn about aeroplanes and was keen to make his first flight. After a few months of training on the flight simulator at home he appreciated my panel layout, asking for details of what each 'clock' was for :)
We headed into Geneva and helped make a few expensive mechanical watches at Breguet. Top job Helen. Dr Horologie has just spent all morning cleaning up his engraving on that watch face, go ahead and write on it. The owner likely won't notice. The screen in the top left of the pic shows a close up of the action.
Breguet is one of the more mechanically innovative of the original old watch companies. When I complained that my watch was losing 4 minutes a day they kindly demagnetised it for me. It has run on time since. The told us that their pilot's watches have heavy iron cases to deal with the strong fluctuating magnetic fields in the cockpit.
Kev and I flew in to Annemasse near Geneva to check out their training fleet. I've never seen so many Robins in one place before! I wonder how they fare, being left out in the weather with timber wings.
I made us a little unpopular by not making myself aware of their excruciatingly intricate noise abatement procedures. The circuit is on the FAR SIDE of the hill you can see in the photo below, to avoid any complaints from the mansions on the hillside overlooking the airfield. After apologising profusely and pointing out that our military forced landing style glide approach from directly overhead made no noise at all, we were all friends again and I was left to absorb the 18 stage VFR departure route (got it, right turn 30 degrees onto 185 once past the warehouse but before I get to the scrap metal yard).
There were two rows of Robins like this;
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Rheinfelden - super jumbos and chair factories
Back into Germany but further south a few days later, we landet at the brilliant airfield at Rheinfelden, near Basel. The boarders are very complicated here, right on the star where Switzerland, France and Germany meet. The airspace is Zurich though, which the Germans complained was so that the Swiss could bring all their heavy transport arrivals in overhead Germany rather than Zurich itself.
Neat modernisation to utilise Roman ruins. I've been loving 'caged stone construction' around here.
There is a summer house garden on the airfield here for members, who permitted us to pitch our tent. No longer being summer no one else was there!
The wide valley of the Rhine is quite industrial here but the airfield and characters are first rate. Sitting around the club table out the front of the great reastaurant, a local pilot Michael told us about his work for a local Swiss aero maintenance and fit out company.
These guys fit out the 737s that Russians and Arabs own (many of, they typically have half a dozen so that the whole royal family can travel together away from the sand pit without exposing themselves to the risk of all being shot out of the air at once). He told quite a story. With long range tanks to be able to fly around the globe continuously, other than all the usualy things that one might imagine, these planes apparently typically have full garages with hoists for Ferrari collections, anti aircraft (and missile) laser defence systems and fully equipt operating theaters with a medial lift down to the operating theatre, fully equipt for absolutely anything in case the main man needs open heart surgery while travelling somewhere. If the client wants a Picasso hung in the plane, Michael has to find something similar to burn test in order to comply with airworthness requirements. He told us of a recent job where they flew a 737 over to the states (16 hrs) and back just to have the intertainment system connections set up by the specialist manufactuers solely to ensure that there was no slight glitch as the TV signal receiver changed to a new sattelite during a flight. Seriously. These guys have their beds gimballed and then slaved to the artificial horizon on the flight deck. Mind bending isn't it? Gotta love Switzerland.
We cycled over to the Vitra furnature factory where the huge new Herzog and Demouron designed furnature display centre was in full swing.
When they open this place 6 months ago they had no idea how popular it would be.
Their HQ visits have doubled. 'Mr' Vitra seems to be a patron of architecture as he has appointed several key exponents to design constructions for his site there. Along with Zaha Hadidn's first ever comission (an obomination) is a relocated Bucky Ball, a Grimshaw factory wing, a retched Gehry museum building and a wonderful Ando concrete meeting complex. The new display centre really is very good and while exhibiting H&D's typical disregard for practicalites of circulation, has a simplicity of form that leads to some wonderful volumes and is beautifully specified and detailed. I'd hate to think what they paid for it but I've no doubt that they are glad now.
Chair;
Chair;
Chairless (they sell these webbing loops for 20 Euro)
Buckminster Fuller (originally installed elsewhere in the 50s);
Prouve Petrol Station;
Grimshaw - shining best with factory design? Unfortunately for me, who actually likes factories, we weren't shown any of the real production facility housed here. Boo.
Gehry;
Ando. Best building here by a long shot. He doesn't have an architecture degree. Goes to show.
Zaha, you are making my girlfriend sick
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Strasbourg
In order to check out Alsace, the area of France boardering Germany, we headed south to Strasbourge. Actually, we flew north, down the Mosel to Koblence and then south, up the Rhine past more castles than I imagined existed on the planet, to Frankfurt then pegged a right and chopped SE over to Strasbourge.
After the war, the French had to give these guys all kinds of carrots to encourage them to remain French. Property law and title registration is different from elsewhere in France and they have a few extra days holiday a year. Place names are all German and the regional dialect (which they are allowed to speak now, France is a unified polygonal France only because some smart cookie not that long ago banned regional dialects) is pretty close to German. Although it has a feeling that it has seen better days, Strasbourge has an amazing ancient cathedral centre and exhibited many welcome french characteristics immediately (sitting at cafe tables for half of the afternoon with a small drink, no body caring what you do on the road...)
Monday, November 8, 2010
Mosel
Having heard so much about the area with Helen working on Reisling import to the UK, I was thrilled to finally be overhead the Mosel on a clear day. What a place! Meandering (German word they tell me) river through steep steep vine plantations.
I am no huge white drinker but I always have time for a fruity acidic Mosel resling. I don't know why it is so untreandy or so inexpensive. People would pay you to take planted plots off their hands up here. If Champagne can club together, price fix and market what they grow there so ridiculously successfully, I think the Mosel producers should be able to do even better. Strange world that we live in. That is for sure.
The club at Neumagen Dhron is like no other that I've seen to date. People drive in from an hour or two away each weekend, live in their campers, cook huge communal meals together and then work on the club buildings and planes and fly (glide) when the weather allows. We made day trips out to Trier, the oldest town in Germany and Ider Oberstein, centre of Gem and stone trading.
Roman 'Black Gate' at Trier
Ider Oberstein. Wow!
Everyone was telling us that when we flew in to Ider Oberstein, to ensure that we ate the local Schwengk Braten (grilled pork). Cooked on this grill in the middle of the airfield 'cafe', it was indeed spectacular in a typically unfussy German way.
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