Another long but this time very successful day’s flying. Overnight rain in Crete had given way to a bright morning and we started the day with a brisk walk out to the end of the harbour wall at Heraklion before leaving for the airport where Phil was going to fly the first leg of 625 nm to Salerno in Italy.
Departure was at 0900 UTC and after an initial climb to F120 to clear the Cretian central spine of mountains, cruise was at FL100 and we left the western coast of Crete for a 410nm leg over the Mediterranean to Carrafa in the toe of Italy before turning northwestwards up towards Sorrento and then Salerno. As forecast, there was a headwind of around 35-40kt which made progress slow but as the leg went on, this headwind slowly decreased. It would however mean another night landing for me and we rang Avignon on the sat phone to check their airfield closing time – no problems here as they were open until 9 pm local time. Considering we were flying towards the centre of the low over Italy, the weather was very good; we were over cu/sc but with increasing higher layers as we approached Italy. Flight time for this leg was 4 hours 50 minutes.
Salerno were very efficient and we managed refuelling and turnaround in an hour. Off again with me flying this time and there were now some large CB buildups but no problem circumventing these and as dusk approached over Corsica, they began to die anyway. The lights of France soon appeared and with a useful short cut from Provence radar, we landed at Avignon at 7:45 pm local having covered 535 nm in 3 hours 30 min making a total distance for the day of 1,150 nm, the highest daily mileage for this trip.
Into Avignon to our ‘usual’ hotel and then for a well earned and very good dinner. Tomorrow Phil does his final leg to Biggin Hill and then I return to Carlisle on Tuesday.