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Terrific club flyout to hot and sunny Bagby airfield in Yorkshire allowing a few more recently qualified pilots to get some experience of what it's all about - with great flying and airmanship displayed by all of them throughout.
Midterm skiing in Chatel/Portes du Soleil. Horrendous blizzards to start with followed by two and a half days of sunny weather and huge quantities of perfect snow. James is skiing well and it's "proper" skiing for me now, just to keep up!
Traditional Christmas hillwalk with Douglas. An atrocious mountain forecast meant chosing a tiddler but we found excellent light and views between the clouds at car level and the clouds at the summit - a day that hugely exceeded expectations.
Honeymoon trip to Glen Shiel and Speyside dodging as best we could, Hurricane ex-Ophelia. 3 bike days, 4 hill days, 1 big waterfall, 4 new Munros and 5 soakings!! But we loved it all!!
A night and day away on Bute for a bar supper and an explore, by bus, of Rothesay and Mount Stuart.
Rented a motorhome and went to Orkney.
A fun club fly-out weekend to Gigha. Well done to Colin and Sharon, Bill, Fraser and Isaac - all microlight touring virgins no more.
On the way home from Tallard after doing my instructor revalidation, we had a day to explore Marseille.
At last - a day off and a good weather forecast, in the west at least, coinciding. We left the cold, windy, murky east coast behind for warm, balmy and calm Mull and Gigha - a different world! Less than 24 hours later we landed back to the still freezing cold east. Brrrr...
Mid-term skiing in the sun with James at Saint Gervais and Les Contamines.
Wonderful skiing again with Gordon and Jill in Saint Gervais, Les Contamines and Megeve.
Great New Year's Day walk to bag a couple of Mamores that had eluded me - Stob Ban and Mullach Nan Coirean - Munros 189 and 190 now done.
Lovely wee winter romp around the Drummocher Munros with Douglas and Kim. Two new ticks (187 and 188) and one repeat of nearly a quarter of a century ago.
A tandeming holiday to properly visit some of the sights we flew over on our microlight trip back in August. With a little Paris mini-adventure thrown in too, since we happened to be passing. I just must mention the Nexus mobile phone - it has an AMAZING phone camera, particularly in low light and even its digital zoom (used cautiously) can give nice results. All of these photos were taken with the phone - it's not practical to carry a proper camera on the bike but no need to anyway, thanks to the Nexus.
Our third attempt in the last year to fly to the Loire and do a Chateaux Tour by microlight - something I've wanted to do for a long time. Following the weather, as we always do, we were then taken east to Epernay, the Champagne region and an entirely unplanned and moving overfly of my great uncle's Great War grave in northern France. It was hot, turbulent, bumpy flying all the way but we loved every minute and really didn't want it to end.
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