We climb up to 10,000 feet still over the island, but more ocean looms just ahead. We've got a pretty decent tailwind going for us. The flight to Inverness should be under 4 hours. For now, though, it's time to let the autopilot do its job, and enjoy the flight. There will be plenty to do this afternoon.

We land and taxi to parking, which is right next door to a place that does float plane tours of Loch Ness. I'd much rather fly myself, and after agreeing to leave my Caravan as a deposit, the owner rents me a Caravan Amphibian to use for a couple of hours or so.

The Amphibian is laid out almost exactly the same as the regular Caravan, so it doesn't take long to familiarize myself with the plane. We grab some lunch stuff out of my plane and throw it in the back seat, and taxi back out to the runway. We lift off and climb to about 1,500 feet, and head over the countryside towards Inverness and the River Ness. We turn south over the river, following it back inland. We're keeping it relatively slow, checking out the things we want to investigate on the way back up. One of the places I really want to see is Castle Urquhart, the remains of a 13th century (and possibly older) castle. Of course, the crown jewel in any trip to Loch Ness is sighting (and getting good pictures of) the Loch Ness Monster.

We fly down the entire length of the loch, landing at the southern end. My plan is to use the plane as a boat, and cruise back to the north, stopping off to see different places as we pass them. I never mentioned to the plane's owner that I have never landed on water before, but then, he never asked me, either. Surprisingly, it wasn't too difficult, although I figured out early that you should let the plane slow quite a bit before trying to turn.

We bob up and down on the water and float for a while, enjoying our lunch and keeping an eye out for Nessie. After lunch, I try to figure out the right power settings to allow us to cruise slowly. It doesn't help my frustration when my brother yells out from the back seat "Kiptyn, the toylits r backin up intu the warp drive!" Finally, I get us crusing north at about 20 knots. After a little while, we reach Castle Urquhart. I pull us up to the shore and shut the plane down, and we walk up the hill to take a look.

We walk back down to the plane and push it back away from the shore. We'll continue our slow cruise up Loch Ness back towards Inverness, and from there, it's back to my plane for our flight down to Stonehenge.

We get back to Inverness and start reloading and fueling the Grand Caravan, and I send my brother in to get the weather report. He comes back telling me thunderstorms are on the way. Not 5 seconds after he says that, under a mostly clear sky, we hear a clap of thunder. We hurridley pack the rest of our stuff and climb in. We get cleared to runway 24, but to get there, we have to taxi down runway 6. That's not a problem, except for the plane already down at the end of 24 waiting to take off. Finally, he's out of the way, and we taxi into position. Lightning strikes are starting to pick up, as is the wind. The wind sock to our left is pointing straight out. We are cleared for departure, and we climb out and turn south, towards Salisbury.

There are a few 'real' airports close to Salisbury, but the Old Sarum Flying Club (EGLS), just outside town, is where we've decided to land. It's a grass strip. I figure I might as well land on every type of surface today.

It's 3pm GMT, and we're about 125NM north of Old Sarum. We should be on the ground (hopefully intact) in about an hour.

... about an hour later ...

Here's a helpful suggestion. Never try to land in a grass field in heavy winds flying directly into the sun. Yeah, we managed to land there, and the plane is undamaged, but my brother needs to change his pants now. Heavy winds were coming out of the west, meaning the landing at Old Sarum had to be on runway 24, right into the sun. It was very difficult to pick the grass strip out through the glare, and we were just about to give up on the idea and go to Boscombe instead, when I finally saw it. We were a bit high, so I threw the nose down and lined us up. I realized it was a short field when I planned coming here, but I didn't think it was THAT short then. It's a very short field. You need to come in slow, and we weren't going slow. We touched down at about 95 knots, and I slammed the brakes on. We tore up good sized chunks of lawn behind us, but we did manage to keep it on the field, and not in the neighbors' back yards.

It turns out it was all for naught, though. It seems that Stonehenge is gone*. None of the locals even knew it existed. I brought up several maps from different sources, and we used the hand held GPS to go to the exact spot on the maps, but alas, no Stonehenge. One of the townspeople called the constable, and they hauled me off to the local jail because they thought I was some kind of crazy man. I spent several hours stewing in a cell, trying to convince the guards such a place existed. Finally, a psychiatrist showed up to evaluate me. He thought I was delusional until I showed him my maps. Then he realized I was merely confused. There really is a Stonehenge, but it only exists in this place called 'the real world', and not there. It took a little while longer for him to convince the police I wasn't a danger, and that I should be allowed to fly away.

* (Actually, the missing Stonehenge looks to be a bug in FS2002. I received an error message on the flight in about missing scenery. The problem has been mentioned by a couple of other people on the message board.)

LEG	Start	Start Time	Land	Land Time	Distance	Trip Time	Fuel Used
1	BIRK Reykjavik, Iceland	05:00 GMT	EGPE Inverness, Scotland	10:15 GMT	652 NM	5 hr 15 min	220 gal
2	EGPE Inverness, Scotland	13:00 GMT	EGLS Old Sarum, England	15:30 GMT	394 NM	2 hr 30 min	140 gal
Day Total					1048 NM	7 hr 45 min	360 gal
Trip Total					3383 NM	25 hr 15 min	1166 gal

Pictures

We are sent off with a fiery display of the Aurora Borealis.	The lights of Reykjavik drop away below us as we head south.
Loch Ness below us as we turn towards Inverness	Flying slow and low south over Loch Ness
Landing at the southern end of Loch Ness	Looking over Loch Ness above Castle Urquhart	Another picture of Castle Urquhart
Look! It's the Loch Ness Monster!!!!! Oh... wait.... just a statue
Picture of a lightning strike as we leave Inverness.	The grass strip at the Old Sarum Flying Club.

Where we've been so far

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