Day out to Fishburn. If Fife Airport was Brenda’s first £40 cup of coffee, Fishburn was the first $100 hamburger, as the cousins call it. It’s a lovely little airfield south east of Durham near Tony Blair’s old constituency of Sedgefield. A grass strip with a bit of a slope on it, no air traffic control and a recently refurbished clubhouse / restaurant.
The outbound trip involved crossing the Forth from Earlsferry to North Berwick, negotiating the restricted area at Torness nuclear power station, getting past Newcastle airspace along the coast and finding a grass field in a sea of grass fields.
Southbound past Torness (just next to top left corner of iPad) Click on any picture to open the full version – in this case you can make out the cooling water outlet from the power station.
Routing southbound along the coast past North Shields towards Tynemouth
Arrival at Fishburn
New clubhouse in the distance
When we got to Fishburn, we noticed some sort of event going on. Tents and stands and marquees. And a load of scooters parked up. It turns out we had arrived in the middle of a scooter rally The 2016 “Ride to the Runway”
There was no food in the clubhouse as the event had the concession for the day, so we got some chips from the burger van and a cold drink from the bar (non-alcoholic!). The cost was kept down by the “Free Landing Fee” voucher from one of the flying magazines – we saved a tenner!
After refuel for the crew (no refuel required for the Sting), the return route was inland to the west of Newcastle airspace via Visual reference Points (VRP) of Derwent Water and Stagshaw mast, then turning for Rothbury to see the WW1 trenches dug for training by Northumberland Fusiliers over 100 years ago in 1915.
For the aerial view see:
https://content.historicengland.org.uk/remote/content.historicengland.org.uk/content/images-books/images/landscape-areas/north-east/trainingtrenchesrothbury20683_055.jpg?w=980&h=650&mode=max&quality=60
And http://northumbriangunner.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/rothbury-training-trenches.html for a bit more detail.
The Met forecast a front from the west and it was looking a little bit grey on the left as we made our way to North Berwick for the Forth crossing, but where we were was good flying conditions, if maybe a little bumpy.
Northumbria coast in the distance, good weather to the east
Bass Rock and the Isle of May, viewed from the south
We landed at Perth in good weather. After 40 minutes of putting the aircraft away, tidying kit and wiping off the bugs it was raining. The front had arrived.
