So where can you go in a microlight? Well, weight shift microlights like G-MVDB have been flown across the North and South Atlantic and the North Sea, and from the Cape of Good Hope to the North Cape of Norway. Adventure and excitement can be had much closer to home, however, as I hope this account of a flight I made from the East coast of Scotland to the West will show.

G-MVDB over Ballachulish (Glencoe)

Friday morning, 7am, Fordoun International Airport. The hangar doors swing majestically back and the graceful silhouette of a Hybred R trike unit emerges from its slumber onto the vast sweep of tarmac. A complex jigsaw of anti-scuff tarpaulins is expertly laid down, and the magic begins as a jumble of dacron, aluminium and a few wires is transformed into a device for leaving the planetary surface. Mating wing to trike creates the familiar yet unlikely silhouette of a weightshift aircraft. Da Vinci eat your heart out!

Always concerned when entrusting his life to a device of his own construction, the Captain makes his walk-round a long and thoughtful one, counting each batten and wire six times and making the required obeisances to hangbolt, tip strut and kingpost. It is now 8:30; the machine is ready, the sky is gentle, the air is still; surely they will leave now? But no - the distant crackling of bacon in the pan lures the crew away as the heavy cloudshadows fall more frequently over deserted Delta Bravo.

2/ THE LONGEST JOURNEY STARTS WITH A SINGLE STEP

Replete, Captain and crew return. The long range tank (a ten-litre Paddy Hopkirk petrol can purchased the previous day from Autosave) is securely strapped in place, along with wing bag and derigging tools. All else necessary for survival in the remote fastnesses of Tir Nan Og will go by surface transport.

The wind is rising and the cloudbase lowering as last-minute attempts are made to get the home-made intercom functional. As the crosswind increases and the sky darkens, the experiment is abandoned and the bundle of wires, mikes and earpieces hastily stuffed into the co-pilot's flying suit. The way the weather is looking, the time for crossing the Cairn o' Mount is now or never .

"Clear prop" is followed by the obligatory six or eight pulls, just enough to steam the glasses up and preheat the flying suit. We are second in line to a Grampian Distribution articulated lorry. It rolls past, the driver staring incredulously at the lunatics strapped to this brightly coloured kite. Arriving at the intersection, we taxi the length of the main runway, turn, perform the customary pre-launch checklist and rituals and unleash the awesome power of a Rotax 447 on full chat.

The incantations work once more, and we are lifted aloft to point at the threatening bulk of the Mounth. Time to concentrate on the serious task of maximising the climb while minimising engine temperature - always a delicate juggling act two up with full fuel when height is required. As we go up, the clouds descend around us, trailing long ragged skirts far below as we thread our way through the gathering gloom. Two-nine, just under the airway, is favourite for the Mounth crossing, but today we top out in the grey underbelly of the clouds at two thousand. Dropping out of the cloudfringe, we graze across a scant six hundred feet above the forbidding peat-scarred moorland, nerves tingling with the thrill of escape as we look behind to see the Mearns disappearing in mist and lowering gloom. Clachnaben's familiar granite tor is just visible as I pull on speed in the desire for the comfort of a field below.

Passing over Invercanny Waterworks on Deeside, visibility is less than five miles and shifting, cloudbase is low, turbulence moderate. The saving factor is the wind; the Easterly crosswind at Fordoun seems to have died away; very little drift is evident, and frequent glances at the compass help to reassure as the normally familiar sweep of Aberdeenshire fades confusingly into the murk. Picking up Torphins, confusion sets in as the hills to the North of the village fail to seem familiar. The road bends the wrong way. Nagging doubts develop; maybe it isn't Torphins, maybe there's more drift than I thought. A need to squeeze between hilltop trees and cloudbase puts the question of our precise position on a back burner for the minute, but once over the ridge I put a little precautionary Westing into our course. Visibility lifts for a few minutes, and Bennachie is visible for long enough to confirm our heading before a misting of vision shows we have once again brushed up against the descending cloudbase. We are momentarily forced down to within three hundred feet of the treetops as we descend into the grassy sanctuary of the Vale of Alford.

One more range to cross, and once more we fly into the intimidating wedge formed by rising ground and the grey ceiling. Cresting the ridge, Insch comes into view. The sock is as usual indicating a slight crosswind, and with a swoop and a holler we dive at the threshold of runway 31, rounding out at two feet for a hundred yard float, promising myself that I really will get round to practising short field landings very soon. If I had known about the coming close encounter at Laggan.........

3/ ACROSS THE WATERSHED

Slowly the plucky band of aeronauts assemble men, machinery and morale. Ron goes for a long lunch, Ian phones to say he will be late, Graham eventually arrives. Wings are fitted to Alistair's Shadow, and it sits sophisticated and disdainful, nose in the air amongst its humble flexwing brethren. Three Hybreds form a Northern showcase for the eccentric genius of Chris Draper, while for once a lone Flash sits outnumbered. Fuel, tents and general supplies are heaped into car and trailer, and the ground crew sets off for the rendezvous at Laggan. I find a copy of the navigation handout and check the headings against those on the sticky labels stuck to Delta Bravo's bar. The main difference seems to be a desire amongst the others to include Huntly on the itinery, as the terrain over the Cabrach between Clatt and Huntly is considered too inhospitable. Having made the trip as far as Feshiebridge before, I elect for this more direct route on the grounds that it is no worse than the Cairn o' Mount and almost certainly a lot better than the terrain we must cross once we leave the Spey valley.

By two o'clock Tim and I are beginning to wonder why we got up at seven. As we have to stop at Feshie to refuel, we decide to leave first. Delta Bravo decides otherwise, as the engine stubbornly refuses to start. Alistair supervises a plug change, and at last we get off just ahead of the field and climb towards Tap O' North. The darker grey, sullen bases of the clouds are grazed by the kingpost as we are lifted towards each cloud then dropped again into the lighter grey between. Sometimes the ragged cloudfringe stubbornly refuses to lift above our sightline as we fly towards it, and reluctantly I throttle back to allow us to pass under, climbing back to general cloudbase level as the buffeting fades and the gloom lifts slightly. Only the conviction that we are flying into better weather in the West enables me to rationalise this flight.

Crossing the Cabrach at between six hundred and a thousand feet AGL, Dufftown and the Eastern slopes of Ben Rinnes materialise through the mirk. A flexwing appears from the general direction of Huntly. It is Ken and Roddy in the Alpha. Passing about half a mile in front of us, they swing South-West down Glen Rinnes as we head for the pass that leads to Speyside. Figuring that they will soon realise the error of their ways and turn back, we scrape over the saddle and descend to a more comfortable couple of hundred foot below cloudbase, passing through a delightfully odourous column of air over a large distillery. As we progress down the Spey valley, the cloudbase lifts, the air begins to smooth out and my white-knuckled grip on the bar relaxes for the first time since leaving Fordoun.

Approaching Aviemore I check the fuel; an ample margin, probably enough to make Laggan; nevertheless, I am glad we have the reserve can with us and permission to land at Feshie. Turning away from the river and over the forest, we head towards the steep ridge that borders the East side of the runway at Feshiebridge. This is the hill that enables the gliders to "get away" from a winch launch when there is any Westerly component in the wind. We are about to find out that it is also the hill that creates interesting turbulence at circuit height when the wind is from the East. There is no gliding today.

At twelve hundred feet over the huge grass strip the air is still relatively smooth. The windsock shows little or no wind on the ground; what there is seems to be along the runway from the South, and so I descend into a left-hand circuit along the side of the hill. Lots of rotor and vigourous chucking about of the bar ensues, and by the time we are level with the runway threshold directional control is minimal. The planned short base leg and turn onto final approach turns into an undignified sideways plummet in the general direction of the strip. It is a stimulating ride, but the runway is huge and pulling on sixty-plus miles an hour gets us travelling roughly along it again, rounding out and floating for miles to a near-perfect touchdown. I really am getting spoilt by all these long runways; between us and Connel lie two unknown fields.

4/ THE GREAT LAGGAN MICROLIGHT RALLY

As refuelling proceeds we hear and then see a flexwing drone down the Spey some two miles away. It looks like Ron. An interested lady with a small child comes over to talk; she is a member of the gliding club, and is staying in a caravan on the airfield. Refuelling completed, I observe the sock. The wind, such as there is, now seems to be coming from the North, so I grit my teeth and prepare to climb back into the turbulence that chucked us about on the way in. Tim is still nonchalant at this point; he has seen enough of my landings from the back seat now to appreciate that even on the most ragged approach things always seem to get sorted out before actual touchdown occurs.

Lady and child watch as we lift into the June afternoon. I wave and they wave back, then we turn West then Southwest, away from the turbulence created by the hill and towards Kingussie and Newtonmore. Now Delta Bravo is in new territory, and I am beginning to believe that perhaps we really are going all the way to the West Coast.

Leaving the A9 at Newtonmore the weather is kind, the sky clear of cloud but hazy. The valley floor abounds in fields that are green and flat. Probably mostly too small, but at least something to aim for if needs must. Now we are looking for the rendezvous field; large, square, and in a corner of the river. At least one microlight should be on the ground to provide the clincher as far as distinguishing features go. Tim spots it first. Ron's machine is already on the ground. Alistair's Shadow is apparently hovering over some power lines as he tries to work out the best approach, and Ken and Roddy are also milling around in the Alpha in what suddenly seems to be a very small and crowded piece of airspace. The windsock says nothing much, and there is no obvious circuit or approach. If there is any breeze it seems to be from the North, and I elect to come in over the river and trees on the South side of the field after watching Alistair and Ken make a success of a similar approach.

We are a little high over the river, and so I pull on speed, flare, and touch down about half way into what seems to be a very short field after the luxurious lengths of Fordoun, Insch and Feshie. Brakeless, I worry about the fence and decide to go round again. "If in doubt go round", the wise ones say; so it's full throttle and we're off after a brief ten foot roll along the grass. Only when committed do I realise the awful truth; I am climbing straight towards a tree-clad hill which I will not clear. I start to turn, but straight away realise that I cannot complete a sufficiently tight one-eighty without getting dangerously low and slow. Now there are only two possible outcomes: we outclimb the hill or we go into the treetops trying. Aiming for the lowest point we climb at full throttle, bar out, feeling for the mushiness that would indicate insufficient control speed for treetop evasion manoevres. Every muscle in my body is in tension, and it feels as if I am physically lifting us over the trees. There is no emotional reserve; fear of the impending crash is a luxury I cannot afford, and there is an acceptance of the situation which leaves me free to concentrate on wringing every last drop of performance from the aircraft. Small bar movements turn us away from the highest trees, whose branches seem to reach up to pull us from the sky. Time expands in its strange elastic way, but at last we reach the top and sweet relief as the bar is pulled in to place the wing in a more reasonable attitude and allow us the luxury of a few extra knots over the stall. As it turns out, this relief is premature; some inconsiderate person has built a house just over the crest, and a further violent lurch to the left is required to avoid our imminent entry through the front door. Now, though, we are over descending ground and the fact of our survival begins to sink in. At this point, according to my passenger, I turned round to him with an idiotic grin on my face. His expression was inscrutable through the visor.

Same approach, not so high over the river this time, and I put it on the ground firmly, less elegantly but maybe fifty yards shorter than before. Bar right in, foot ready to stick on the front wheel if necessary; we're definitely staying down this time. And of course I have to pour on the power to taxi the last hundred yards up to the fence. We climb silently out of flying suits and helmets. After a minute Tim remarks that he found the previous five minutes quite stimulating, and I am forced to admit that I did as well. A brief replay evokes Tim's opinion that the closest we had actually been to a tree was probably as much as ten feet, which surprised me a little; but then, I had been looking where we were hopefully going, which was up.

Wandering up to Ron, Alistair and Ken, I casually express mild relief, thinking I must have caused them some momentary alarm. They reply that they had assumed I was doing it for purposes of fun and the entertainment of those on the ground. This unlikely statement closes the incident for now, although much experience and wisdom will no doubt be gleaned from future mental reruns. Unwinding, we turn to watch Graham making a virtually identical approach to our first attempt. Deja Vu! He is about to touch down halfway into the field when he decides to go round. Full throttle and he's heading for the hill. "Climb," is my silent shout. But Graham decides to turn. No more than seventy feet above the ground, he throws the Hybred into a steep climbing turn to the left. The machine sideslips twenty feet towards the ground before he lowers the nose slightly. Now he is definitely too low; now they are not going to make it over the telephone wires that run along the bottom of the hill. Then a strange thing happens: the trike appears to pass right through the telephone wires without touching them. No further miracles are required. Men and machine shoot between the trees on either side of the road and start to behave more like an aircraft and less like a kamikaze bat testing its radar system after a long illness.

The relief when Graham and Ian touch down successfully turns to confusion as great clouds of dust spray up around the nose of the pod. As the machine comes to an unusually rapid halt in the middle of the field we can see that the nosewheel is at a very rakish angle indeed. The front horn has bent, and the forks now trail backwards under the pod. Luckily, the trike has remained upright and the repair bill will not be outrageous. It is a sad end to the trip for Graham and Ian but, as the oldest of old sayings has it, it could have been worse. The chorus from a John Prine song called "The Accident" seems appropriate: "They don't know how lucky they are,
They could have run into that tree,
Got struck by a bolt of lightning
And raped by a minority."

5/ WESTWARD HO

Fuelled and sedated with tea, Delta Bravo's crew decide to lead the pack again as we will have to make another refuelling stop somewhere along the route. The surface wind is virtually nil, so we elect to depart along the longest axis of the field, taxying into the NW corner of the field and taking off in a South-Easterly direction. We have to climb on the reciprocal of our intended track until we can turn over the power lines and head West.

In the concentration of the climb-out and turn in the narrow valley I fail to notice that the glen splits in two just past the field. Once we have a thousand foot in the bank I look ahead and wonder why we can't see Loch Laggan. I check our heading against the sticky label on the bar; mysteriously, our heading seems to be about twenty degrees too far to the North. As I am sure we are still flying down the same glen, I become a little confused and begin to think of turning back. Luckily, at this point a side glen to our left gives us a view of a sandy beach at the North end of a large loch, and I realise what must have happened. Flying down this short glen to the loch the seriousness of the terrain we are now overflying becomes apparent. Swamps, rocks and precipices are the only options below.

As we swing onto the correct heading over the end of the loch the great swathe of water beckons us Westward, offering an easy path through the towering mountains that rise to three and a half thousand foot to either side. At first much of my attention is taken up in scouring the terrain both sides of the loch for likely landing places. I soon realise that this is a pointless exercise, as the only flat area is the watery surface of Loch Laggan itself. Once the great leap of faith has been taken and I have decided that the Rotax will continue to run, there is time to enjoy the view. The air is surprisingly smooth at two thousand feet, the light Easterly breeze being funnelled along the glen. Nearing the South-Western end of the loch, the hills open on our right to reveal the towering cliffs of Creag Meagaidh, then we are over the hydro electric dam and gaining height AGL as the wooded terrain slopes down towards Roybridge and the Braes of Lochaber. About twenty-five minutes after leaving Laggan we see the first field in which an attempt at a landing might be possible, and buttocks unclench ever so slightly as we fly down to join the Great Glen at Spean Bridge.

Following the road to Fort William, the North face of Ben Nevis displays its towering cliffs, still a forbidding ice-clad fastness even on this warm day in late May. Now the Atlantic waters of Loch Linnhe glint ahead of us in the early evening sunlight; we have crossed the country, coast to coast across the widest part of Scotland.

6/ DOWN BUT NOT OUT IN FORT WILLIAM

In a bend of the River Lochy I see the perfect field and point it out to Tim, who nods in agreement. We have already discussed this landing in a strange field which we knew had to come. It has been agreed that as many low passes as are necessary would be carried out to ensure that no hazards exist. I bring us down to a thousand feet and check the drift; there seems to be a North-Easterly breeze coming down the Great Glen, much as I had expected, and I set up a left hand circuit for an initial overflight at five hundred feet. At circuit height it is suddenly, surprisingly bumpy. As we cross the field at five hundred feet I can see the daisies and know the grass is short. The field is level and long into wind, with a straight approach over a line of trees and the river. As we turn downwind for a second circuit, the turbulence worsens. Our circuit takes us towards the houses at the locks at the Southern end of the Caledonian Canal, and there is a house on the Northern edge of the field. As I turn onto base leg, I decide that I have seen enough to be sure the field is good, and I chop the power and set up an approach. Lumping and bumping over the trees, we suddenly fall through a surprising wind gradient. Pulling on speed, a rapid push out is necessitated by the slightly rising ground. Cresting the rise with plenty of speed, I pull in once more, then round out. We seem to scream along in ground effect for an unusually long time, height varying from one to five feet as I get a little behind the aircraft. Just as I feel it all coming together, we sink onto the lip of a sunken channel running directly across our track and bounce back into the air. Pulling in to avoid a stall, the eventual touchdown is best described as positive. I pull the bar hard in to slow us down. The surface is not as smooth as it had appeared now we are jolting over it in our three-wheeled cartie; in fact, it is unbelievably, teeth-jarringly bad for a daisy-decked riverside pasture. Before we have slowed much below flying speed, we run into another one of the strange longtitudinal depressions that caused the first bounce. About two feet deep, with sides sloping at maybe thirty degrees, it compresses us into its grassy hollow and decelerates us up the other side. As we come to a halt, Tim is mystified by my rantings: "Right, that's the end of it then. Better phone Kathy and get her to bring the trailer. B----r, d--- and b----".

The reason for my raving is that just as we are coming to a halt I realise that the compression strut is no longer anything like straight. That sudden deceleration has brought the wing and duopole forwards with sufficient force to put a ten degree bend in the strut slightly below half way down. It would no longer be possible to get the bar far enough out for take-off. Too late, I remember that you should keep the bar out on rough field landings.(Like most pilots I have perfect twenty-twenty hindsight).

As we dehelmet and contemplate this sad ending, part of me begins to question this defeatism. I remember legendary tales of veteran pilots who banana'd compression struts every second landing in their early careers. Sometimes they would fit a new one, and indeed some had vast collections of interestingly curved aluminium tubes in their garages; but if no new strut was immediately available it was not unheard of to straighten the old one as a temporary measure. With bated breath I conduct a thorough inspection of duopole, front horn, seat frame and all other possible stress points. A clean bill of health, as I expected; after all, it wasn't a hard landing, only a sudden deceleration once down. No stress on any wing tubes. Compression struts, I remember, take in-flight loads in tension of the order of a few hundred pounds. Am I prepared to bend this straight and use it? Yes, I am. Off it comes, one end on my shoulder and the other on the ground while Tim kneels on the bend and bounces delicately up and down.

It is in this position that the family from the house at the edge of the field find us when they come over. They ask the usual question - have we landed or crashed? (I have noticed that most non-flying observers seem unable to make this subtle distinction where flexwings are concerned). I reply that we have landed as we were a little short of fuel, and that having straightened this small part of the plane we will refuel and be on our way to Oban. They are very friendly, and even apologise for the state of the field when I complain about the bumps, explaining that they did not know we were coming. Then they walk away, back to their house, shaking their heads almost imperceptibly.

A two-stroke buzzes, high. The two Rons pass between us and Ben Nevis at a respectable pace and height, long range fuel tank still comfortably full, secure in the knowledge they will reach a known destination before a return to earth is required.

After much squinting and delicate bending the strut is as straight as is possible without a bending jig. A close inspection of the anodising reveals no cracking or tell-tale rippling and, joy of joys, when it is replaced it is still exactly the right length, confirming the precise triangularity of the trike. For me, this is the deciding factor, and we refuel and turn our attention to the impending takeoff.

7/ COASTING

This is a vast field, but nowhere can we find a stretch longer than sixty yards without one of these sunken ditches. Possibly they are the sunken traces of old brushwood drains. What is certain is that we are going to have to cross at least one of them on our take-off run.

Eventually I choose to depart from a point some 100 yards from the SW corner of the field, starting our run beside the clump of large trees that form an island in the grass here. I figure that if we start just this side of the first depression, roll gently into it then accelerate up the other side, then although we won't be off by the time we hit the next one, we should be light enough to use a little ridge I have spotted to bounce harmlessly over it with the bar full out.

Pre-flight checks, just enough throttle to roll us down the three-foot long slope, then as the nosewheel rises up the other side it's full throttle and bar to the strut. Even this supposedly smooth section is shockingly ridged under the grass. As we approach the next sunken channel, the slight ridge preceding it throws us into the air as planned and we bounce shallowly and harmlessly across. We run a further twenty feet, then the next bump throws us almost ten feet into the air. I decide that in the interests of the undercarriage we are staying up this time, and ease the bar in. We skim the grass in ground effect for a further hundred yards, building up a good head of steam before pushing up into a steady climbing turn to the left. We wave to the field family, then it's all hands to the bar as the same turbulence that bothered us on the way in throws us about and makes a ragged mockery of my planned two-seventy curve onto track. At one thousand feet it all smooths out, and we're on course and over Fort William. A minor adjustment takes us out over Loch Linnhe and away from the town as we climb steadily towards three thousand, my weather eye on the EGT gauge.

No landing fields suggest themselves either side of the water, so we fly serenely down the middle, gazing in delight across the hazy, mountainous wastes of Ardgour and Ardnamurchan. From Corran Ferry we follow the Ballachulish road for a mile then swing South across the water to Appin. Another spectacular vista opens up to the East, down to Kinlochleven and the Mamores. Following the coast road South, we are afforded glimpses of the familiar Glencoe hills from this spectacular new perspective.

Past Shuna Island flat fields appear round Port Appin, and then as we pass over Eriska House a wondrous sight comes into view across Ardmucknish Bay. It is a vast acreage of tarmac, a runway wide enough to land a microlight across and long enough to put a big jet down on. North Connel airfield is kept up by the local council, and is a recognised diversion for commercial "heavies". Letting down to a thousand feet, we paralell the runway a few hundred yards out to sea, turn towards Connel Bridge and examine the windsock. It says nothing. Turning back out to sea, I perform a steep three-sixty to lose height and come in steeply over the water. Below five hundred feet the air is all over the place as the East wind rotors and eddies down onto the runway. Lots of speed drops us through it quickly with much rocking of wings and stirring of the bar, then at twenty feet it's flat calm and a long, long flare to an imperceptible, near-perfect touchdown. In spite of the sixty mph approach we have used perhaps one tenth of the runway, and the taxi to the parking area in front of the gliding club seems to take forever. At last we arrive, switch off and drop the wing onto the grass.

8/ TRANSATLANTIC

A pub at the end of the runway sounds handy, but at North Connel it's a long walk. A few beers, an exchange of tales, and it's early to sleeping bag. This is the true spirit of microlighting - a tent under the wing and new skies to fly in the morning.

Morning comes, camp is struck, an expedition is made to a filling station to buy fuel. A trip to the local campsite follows to make use of their facilities and purchase that forgotten essential,midge repellent.

Back at the airfield, everyone makes ready. The two Rons get away first and vanish into the haze over Lismore Island. Delta Bravo breaks tarmac at 08:50, and we head North. An attack of hydrophobia dictates a circuitous route for our first sea crossing. Over the Lynn of Lorn to Lismore by way of Eilean Dubh we are never more than a mile from something solid. A steady cruise-climb sees us at two-five by the time we reach Lismore, and we push steadily up towards an intended three thousand five hundred. This would seem to be a reassuring height from which to begin the crossing from the South-Western tip of Lismore to Duart Point on Mull.

It is hazy, with visibility down to three or four miles. The mainland coast disappears as Lismore angles away from the coastline. The island is long and thin and largely hidden underneath us. As we pass through three thousand feet there is no clear horizon, nothing in sight except the white speck of the lighthouse on the rocky skerry at the tip of Lismore. A strange sense of detachment from reality pervades. Inexplicably, we swing from side to side in unplanned 30 degree banks, the long thin strip of the island coming into view first to port and then to starbord as I endeavour to maintain a heading. This weird disorientation is only resolved when I drop back down to three thousand and look down, concentrating determinedly on the strip of land passing beneath us instead of focussing on the white dimensionless speck of the lighthouse. Now I believe what they say. You canot fly without a horizon.

Lismore is rough and rugged. Anxiously I peer into the haze for a sight of the coast of Mull, not wanting to set out into the void on a compass course with my only reference the flat, unremarkable sea three thousand feet below. Just before we clear the Southern tip of the island Duart Castle looms into view across the water. With a horizon and three thousand feet in the bank the crossing of this two or three miles of water is a relaxed affair, trading in some altitude for speed as we pass high above a Caledonian Macbrayne ferry plying the Sound of Mull below us.

We pass over Duart Castle at two thousand feet and turn Northwest along the coast. So far the air has been smooth, but ahead of us is a large bar of orographic cloud stretching out from the summit of a substantial hill just to the West of our track. At our present height we will penetrate the base of it, so is it to be over or under? I opt for under, and we drop to fifteen hundred feet. As we approach the cloud, we begin to be chucked about and mild white knuckle syndrome sets in. We battle on, now down to twelve hundred. I am conscious of the long distances between potential landing sites, and wonder if we should have gone over the top. Later on, I discover that the Rons did and we should have.

Passing over Fishnish, where the Lochaline ferry comes in, things settle down a bit and I start to enjoy the view again. Five more minutes and Glenforsa comes into view. There is an impressive collection of planes there. We fly along the beach and over both windsocks at one thousand feet. We have been warned that these socks, one at each end of the six hundred yard strip, frequently point in opposite directions. As we pass overhead, the Eastern sock is swinging indecisively through an arc of 90 degrees. We continue on to the Western end of the strip for a second opinion. Here the sock shows a steady 30 degree crosswind from our right. The generally prevailing wind is Easterly, the grass strip is wide, and I decide on this end. It is choppy at this height, probably worse lower. Nothing else in the circuit, so I heave us into a left-hand three-sixty designed to bring us out on short finals at the right height. We are thrown about too much and the turn gets messy. I increase the power and we end up too close and too high, so I fly another big circle out to sea before crabbing back in towards the seaward corner of the perimeter fence. We are thrown quite violently from side to side but remain on target, aiming for a point about fifty yards beyond the threshold and in the centre of the runway. Suddenly we fall through a hole in the air, arriving closer to the threshold than I had originally intended, and right over at the left hand side of the strip. As we flare, I see drainage ditches running across our path, and realise we are not in fact touching down on the main part of the runway. Visions of Fort William flash across my mind, but fortunately these ditches are stone-filled, level and friendly, and we decelerate to a comfortable speed without incident.

There are light aircraft of every shape and type, lots of people watching. The sense of achievement as we taxi up to park beside the other two flexwings is profound. A seriously satisfying piece of aviation has been committed, and we are happy now to simply relax on the grass while others defy gravity overhead. (All except for Ron, that is, who had to visit Fingal's Cave - but that's another story).