Day 4 aka The BIG one – Looking for Mountains, Monsters, Wizards and so many bridges!
DAY FOUR – Distance approx. 500 nautical miles (5-6 hours flying time)
We were keen to tack across to the Isle of Arran which is a regular holiday haunt for the Whites! Over Holy Isle near Lamlash and along the East coast passed Brodick Castle. The weather was not great, I mean we were in Scotland after all! Although there was a lot of blue sky there were a lot of showers as well, so we decided to head back to the mainland.
After Arran, we all had to take a bit of a wiggle through some of the smaller islands off the West coast of Scotland on our way to Oban airport to try and avoid the heavy showers, low clouds and poor visibility! It was a big test for all the pilots, but we made it. Oban is a great big airport and we were quite surprised that such a massive airport had no catering facilities so lunch consisted of the few snacks that we had with us and decided we wouldn’t stay long and after refuelling we got going again!
“Most challenging was Scotland and the weather in some of the valleys near Ben Nevis”
Day 4 was all about avoiding the worst of the weather but we pretty much flew a straight line straight up to Inverness, this route takes you through the big Lochs including Loch Ness itself. No signs of Nessy but would recommend to any experienced helicopter pilots out there as you really have to FLY this terrain; peaks, water, cloud etc.