Windemere

Friday the 22nd and the weather was good again. Had offered to take Darren, a running friend up for a jolly if the weather was suitable so gave him a bell and he was raring to go. Asked if Julie (his wife) could come along and I was fine with that - the more the merrier (as long as the W&B are ok). Decided to just go for a local flight as it made things easier and beside, I wanted to practice some position fixing if possible over an area I knew quite well anyway. This local flight ended up going over Windemere in the end because they wanted to see the lake where they used to run a boat.

Did my plan and the passenger briefing and we were off. I expected it to be quite bumpy since there were quire a lot of fluffy clouds but it was remarkably smooth except in the up and downdrafts as we returned from Windemere over the northern part of the Dales. Still managed to do a pretty good job of altitude holding and I reckon it's not to far off what is required for the CPL now.

There was a glut of traffic when we came back into Leeds and I did get a bit nervous when I had to extend downwind way beyond normal and ended up being almost overhead the city centre - I even saw the C&W building where I work from the air for the first time which gives some indication of how far out we got (in the photo you can just see the nearby condemned semicircular building on the far left about a fifth of the way down) . But the approach from about an 8nm final was pretty good (two reds, two whites most of the way) and the landing was at least passable if I remember rightly.

Daz and Julie really enjoyed the trip and were impressed how I didn't get in a flap at any stage and sounded really professional over the radio which certainly gives me a bit more confidence about things.