June

[Bierzo Baggie]

A quick note about my flight from London City to Rotterdam.
VLM operate puddle-jumpers - small prop aircraft that remind me of what it was like to fly in the Air Traning Corp - 'real' flying as opposed to the bland bus-rides on modern jet liners. Sadly these smaller craft do less well in turbulent conditions. Our descent into one of Europe's busiest ports almost ended in the drink as our aircraft took a brutal hammering from violent storms sweeping across the channel. I've been through a few of these and this one was right up there on the white knuckle scale. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, a menacing bassline to the manic lead-guitar scream of the engines. At one stage I crashed head-first into my newspaper as we dropped what felt like a hundred metres in a nanosecond. It's nice to be back on terra firma.

Now that's what I call survival stuff... you wouldn't catch me in that aeroplane..:o