Aviation Tour - Maps on www.bankleft.com

St Emillion is a unesco listed ancient village cut into the white stone from which buildings are construced here. The naturally formed SE orientated gully is cut into an escarpement and limits the extent of the village. Two of the top classified estates in the St Emilion appelation, Pavie and Ausone have been planted since roman times. We stayed at the Gite of a wine making family Lasfagreas just north of St Emilion at Chateuax La Roseraie. St George St Emilion appelation was just to the north of where we stayed, across a small stream. The rolling terrain in these areas is dotted with old oaks. Compared to the Medoc, Graves, Pomerol or Entre Deux Mer (between the rivers), it is a lovely place. Without the support of our books in selecting wineries we resorted to cycling around the area and picking out good plots. The large Chateaux have been built on all of the best growing terrain so this helped us decide whos doors to knock on. Being well out of tourist season, we had to impose slightly on several occasions which turned out to be well worth the effort.

The final day in St Emilion showed just how good the weather is in the area. Despite being clobbered by several rain and hail fronts, we were able to cycle around between the showers in bright warm sun shining through the crist air. We are currently in Chartres, half way back to the UK. The whole of the north of France is covered in snow which is fairly unnerving. The runway here is only 800m but was mainly clear for our arrival this afternoon.

As we move further north, there is more and more snow. At the latitude to the Loire, there was just a dusting, setting this fabulous Chateua off nicely. Why not construct right ON the river (gallic shrug);



The weather is not looking particularly good this week so we will have to proceed north tomorrow with caution. It feels as though we have really done the most that we could this year – there was snow on the ground when we arrived back in the UK to construct the plane on the 8^th January, as there presumably is now for our return. I had to pour warm water over the carburettor to be able to start the plane today and crunch around in ankle deep snow to tie down and unpack. We haven;t been able to sleep in the tent for the past month. I won't be best pleased if we manage to get all the way back to the UK tomorrow and we find that the trains aren't running down to London from Norfolk where the plane will hibernate. Politicians are making press releases that "The UK is well prepared" but they did that at the start of the year too, shortly before running out of grit salt for the roads and being forced to buy tons from Germany at huge expense. One couldn't even find table salt in the supermarkets for a month. Happy days for panel beaters, bit not a big improvement for my boiled egg and soldiers in the morning.


Check out this military airport in northern France - they were closed due to the snow so we were allowed to fly over them. You'd think they'd put the planes inside in these conditions, wouldn't you?




I'm very much looking forward to seeing our build supervisor Gary and our friends in London for a sadly short few days on the way through but I'm trying not to think about The Underground and Heathrow. Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean. I'll think I'll act like a Japanese commuter, pull my beanie down over my eyes, wedge tunes into my ears and take deep controlled breaths. Bring On the Sunny Side!