Flying high

Yesterday I fulfilled a long held dream of mine to fly in a helicopter.
The flight was a gift from my husband for my 60th birthday last year, we waited until the better weather to take it and what do you know ...... it was almost cancelled because of rain, after us having 3 weeks of solid sunshine. In fact the flight after ours, the last of the day,  was cancelled, it had been raining most of the afternoon and visibility was not good. We flew with Adventure 001










My husband and 2 other passengers were in the back and I was up in the co-pilot's seat :-) with full harness, I paid extra for the privilege but it was so worth it to have a view from the front interrupted only by water on the front of the helicopter.

We flew at over 130 miles an hour and at one point over 2200 feet high but mostly at 1300 feet. We took off from a field close to the West Usk lighthouse near to Newport in Gwent and flew over Cardiff docks, the Millenium stadium and the City centre then on to Caerphilly and the Brecons. Back down through Newport then following the motorways over Caldicot and onto the 2 suspension bridges over the River Severn. They seem to cover a vast amount of mud and water joining England and Wales. We followed the river back up to Newport docks, finally flying over the power station where my husband works before landing back in the field to be greeted by our family. We have videos of the take off and landing but sadly none from the air as the camera would surely have focused on the rain drops being blown across the cockpit windshield.
Ideally we wanted to be able to see where we live but realised that by being over Caerphilly we must have already flown over our area. You truly do not realise the speed at which you are travelling until you think how far you have travelled.

On our way to board.

You can see my legs in the front.

All over and so happy to have been able to do it.

Our Pilot, shame he blinked ;-)  We all had to wear the headsets with built in microphone to drown out the noise and enable us to talk to each other. It was interesting to hear air traffic control and other aircraft. We had to inform Cardiff airport we were flying in their area and inform them when we were landing again.

Finished for the day, you can see how misty it has become with low cloud and rain.