Africa Pt.1. Tunisia to Eastern Libya

Mt. Etna recedes behind me. To the south, across 100 miles of clear blue ocean, I can just make out a slight change in colour that betrays the location of Malta.

Sicily is a beautiful country, spread out in broad, sleepy grandeur beneath the towering slopes of a volcano. As I looked down from 14,000 feet I made out towns and villages, farms and vinyards on rolling hillsides, and a most incredible contrast of greens and golds.

Now, in front of me, is Tunisia, with the suburb of Carthage nestled at the north end of a large bay. Again, history slaps me in the face. Carthage would have been a  name familiar to the Romans. They travelled across that sea below me, on trade routes that would have been ancient even to them. However, the Carthage that Rome knew has no direct line to us; it was sacked during the rapid expanse of the early Islamic caliphate in the 7th Century, and was only re-established as a district of Tunis 100 years ago.

No empire lasts forever.

I have never been to Africa in my life. I have never seen it. A massive continent, with such varied peoples, cultures, geography and climate. I wonder if I'll ever go. My grandad worked in western Africa for a few years after the 2nd world war, I think he didn't like it much as he gave my Dad some quite direct advice: Don't go to Africa. On the other hand, my wife's grandfather, my mother-in-law's dad, worked high up in the colonial civil service and was posted to Africa to help see one of Britain's possessions through the perilous waters towards stable independence; with a legitimate government and a constitution to guide it.

How I wish I could talk to them both now, to know what Africa they both saw.

Because here's the thing: the Africa that was shaped over thousands of years of human history was obliterated. Washed away between the start of the slave trade in the 16th Century, and the end of the scramble for Africa by the scheming European powers. The tribes, the nations, the empires, the social and cultural groupings and interactions were obliterated, and replaced entirely with a series of artificial countries; borders decided by Europeans as they vied for control of the vast nation and its resources. By the start of the 20th century, the only country in Africa to have survived the scramble for Africa was Liberia, which was itself set up to be a place African American slaves could go if they wanted to return to the land their ancestors had been taken from by force.

So what was Africa in my grandparents day? The people were real, people descended from ancient nations and empires. But the structures, the governments, the institutions... were paper houses set up by Europeans as they began to release their grip on the great continent, evoking the ghosts and the memories of names that bubble through from history.

After a stop for fuel and a faster plane (we'll be covering a lot of ground today), I'm taking off from Tunis, heading south down the coast.

The terrain is... interesting. There are some fields near the coast, and the beginnings of the Atlas mountains rising towards the west. But the majority of the landscape is filled with olive groves; grids of trees systematically planted with mathematical precision almost as far as the eye can see. My flight path has me drifting to the East as I travel south. As I approach Sfax, a strange oil painting appears to my right and I am convinced there's been some huge in-game graphical glitch. But no, this is how it looks; a large salt lake called Sebkhet de Sidi El Hani rests in greens, blues, purples and yellow beneath me. 

Soon the Mediterranean replaces it beneath my virtual feet. In front of me, the coastline, until now travelling north-south, sweeps around to the left and heads due East.

This is the coast of Libya. Not a bad case study for what I was talking about above. What is Libya? The area has variously been under control of different empires - closest to our time, the Ottoman collapse psot-WW1 left it in the hands of Italy, who were, with all the kindness in the world, not very good at having an empire. In WW2 it was the stage across which vast tank battles between the Germans and British swept.

Now, look at it on a map. The borders travel right down into the middle of the Sahara. This is 100% European colonialism at play here. It's just sand. And I know that because our flight path is taking us over the coast, over the thin strip of fields, to the south and west of Tripoli, and out into lands that change into something else; the green leaches out of the fields. Open spaces start to appear between farms, and the roads thin out. I begin to form the impression that the land I see below me might once have been fertile, a welcome inheritance from one generation to the next, but now might be barely good enough to eke a living off.

Then there are no more fields. The earth in front of me is brown and yellow; bare hills, dry lake beds made out only by their shadowed contours, rock and heat. I am at 8,000 feet yet it is not cold outside.

Up until 6000 years ago, the Sahara was savannah, grassland, even forest. There were people then, who would have lived on this land. And year on year, the rain became less and less frequent. The rivers and streams slowed, narrowed, dried up, until water could only be found underground. The grass would have died back, year on year the space in which people could not live in the middle of what is now the largest hot desert on earth would have grown bigger.

And now it is a *vast* emptiness before me. It's not sand dunes I see, but bare rock, stony ground, with sand filling the spaces. I will pass onto the huge Sand Sea that spreads from western Libya into eastern Egypt, but it is still 5 hours' flying time in front of me, and first I'll have to stop for fuel. Ranges of hills as bare as you might see on Mars or the Moon slip serenely past the cockpit windows. I pass the time reading about the history and geography of the region, as this alien world slips beneath me.

I notice grid patterns laid out beneath me, stretching on for miles and miles in all directions. Convinced again that I've noticed a graphical glitch, some poor stitching together of satellite photos, I check and sure enough they are there on Google Earth too. I do some research. They are part of a seismic survey effort to find oil, using explosions to map underground. There is so much oil under the sand.

Nearly three hours after I last saw a human settlement, I am descending towards my destination; a small airfield that doesn't appear to be near anywhere at all. And as I approach and the GPS tells me it's 10 miles in front of me, it doesn't appear to be... anywhere at all .There's nothing out there. I don't have enough fuel to head back to the last airport I saw nearly 150 miles behind, so this isn't ideal. I scan the ground in front of me. Finally, with 4 miles to go, I see it. 5 small buildings, and 1/2 a mile away from them a strip of asphalt laid apparently directly onto the rock of the desert floor, with a hanger and fuel dispenser at one end. No painted centre line, nothing. But it'll do!

I roar over the field perpendicular to the runway, bring the plane about and drop it safely onto the desert. The outside air temp reads 40c. There is nothing here but fuel, but that's all I need.

The Italy Leg: Nice -> Grosseto -> Naples

 The. Weather. is. Glorious!

The Cessna leaps off the tarmac into the sky, and I just have to nudge the nose to the right slightly to see the waterfront of Nice curving in front of me. Minutes later, Monaco with its old palace, harbours & casinos is drifting past the window. I've picked a low cruise to begin with - 800 feet, then pop up to 1,5000 to get a better view inland.

There are two good roads to use along this stretch, where the foothills of the alps run in ridges perpendicular to the water and go right to the water's edge before dropping down into the Med. The first is the Autoroute; as you head east towards the border with Italy, the road careens into long tunnels though the high ridges, before bursting out halfway up the side of the walls of beautiful green valleys with vineyards on the slopes, beautiful red tiled roofs far beneath the road bridge, and the glistening ocean at the valley's head, before you plunge into the next tunnel.

The second is a smaller winding road that runs along the seafront, often halfway up the hillside that falls away to the right straight down hundreds of feet to the sea. This is the one to take if you want to pretend you're in a classic Bond film.

I can see both routes from 800 feet. I love this place. Once in Italian airspace, I climb to 4,000 feet, and set best cruising speed for Genoa. after 30 minutes, the coast curves to the right and I begin moving down the "boot" of Italy, making a small detour to buzz the town of La Spezia at 200 feet. 3 years ago I went swimming with friends off a small rocky outcrop, which is there in the game. 

Then I'm moving down the Tuscan coast, and pull the Cessna up into a long climb, topping out at 10,000 feet. From here, I can see the narrow coastal plain, then the snowy heights of the Apuan Alps, the northernmost massif of the range of mountains that runs down the length of Italy, south of their great plain. Beyond that, the green hills of Emelia-Romagna fade into the heat haze on the horizon.

I find myself looking backwards as the scene rolls behind my little virtual Cessna. From this vantage point, I can see the spot on the beach where I ate a burger and had a beer with my friends. We sung the joint English/ Italian version of various Lion King songs. It's quite beautiful.

In my reverie, I almost don't notice that we're already passing of Pisa, and I look down just in time to see the old Cathedral and leaning tower almost directly under the flight path.

From here, it's time to descend into Grosseto, which I only picked because it seemed about the right distance for this flight. I'm getting alright at landing this bird now, and am feeling confident enough to record a video of the touchdown. On final approach, I can see Corsica sitting on the horizon.

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For the next leg, the sun is just setting into the water as I swing the nose round to continue to the south. This flight is quiet. There's something incredibly relaxing about watching the lights come on below, and by the time I'm approaching Rome, passing over Lake Bracciano where 12 years ago I swam (and got a parking ticket) the sky is completely dark and the city shines in front of me.

I find myself thinking about history. When I was in this city 12 years ago, we were just walking around enjoying the sites and went round a corner to be confronted by the Pantheon. It was so incongruous - the narrow streets lined with fashionable clothes shops, I think there was even a Mcdonalds, then turn the corner and hey, there's a 2,000 year old temple, built during the reign of Emperor Hadrian...

...who also ordered the construction of a wall I virtually flew over on my way down from Scotland.

How did people do all of that? At a time when you couldn't go faster than the distance a man could walk in a day (even horses aren't really faster by the time you factor in rest stops), the Romans had an empire that 2,000 years later, in a plane, it's taken me 4 days to fly in from the edge of. I think of all that land. Absolutely vast.

And when the Pantheon was built, the great pyramids were as old to them as the Pantheon is to me. History is insane.

Clouds are beginning to slip past the cockpit, blocking out patches of stars and lights from towns and roads beneath me. As I fly the approach into Naples, Mount Vesuvius to my left, a line of rain is obscuring the 2nd half of the runway. I touch down with the stars overhead, and taxi into pattering rain and clouds, before shutting the engine down and going to sleep, still thinking of ancient things.

Geneva -> Nice

 I've been looking forward to this one. It's going to be evocative of holidays, road trips on the continent cruising ever further south, until that moment you start seeing the first signs that there's a mountain range in front of you and beyond that, the French Riviera melting out into the most beautiful azure blue Mediterranean sea, whispering hints of African sun, dry deserts and a way of life almost forgotten to us northern Europeans.

But it's bloody overcast again, isn't it guys?

Sigh. I take off from Geneva and turn south, and I can't even see the Lakes for rain before I once again climb up into endless low grey overcast.

The overcast takes on a different air though - until now, I've known that the ground in front of me is relatively flat. But now, on the GPS as I fly towards Chambéry, I can see... terrain. It's not just "ground" any more. It's terrain; mounts merging into foothills merging into bigger hills and off in the distance, peaks towering far above.

It is imperative that when you're flying a plane, you don't accidentally fly into the side of a mountain. This is a lot easier when you can see the mountains, rather than just being aware that they exist and they're out there in the gloom somewhere.

My plan is to fly to Chambéry, turn left to enter a valley between two high ridges that run north-south to Grenoble, then follow the mountains round the the left while climbing to pass over a mass of proper snowy mountains before descending again towards Nice. Once again, I begin to feel like an idiot for going along with the poor real-world weather conditions and not just choosing an in-sim sunny day to enjoy the views.

Over Chambéry everything changes. In 5 seconds the cloud goes from dark grey through to orange and then... Alps.

The parallel ridges tower up past the sides of the Cessna, and ahead, over Grenoble, a huge thunderstorm sits, deep orange in the light of the setting sun. Sitting amid the left flanks of the storm cell are the snow capped peaks of the French alps. It is glorious. Other players are also there, enjoying the scene and again that makes it feel more real. It's a virtual space, but when you share it, that doesn't diminish the beauty of it.

Wary of the icing and turbulence that may be hidden in the storm, I move off course to pass round its side, and it slides past the wings. In front of me, thin, patchy layers of clouds are moving through reds and golds as the sun finally sets below the horizon, lights coming on in the valley beneath me. I dim the lights on the control panel in front of me, and watch the stars come out between layers of cloud as I climb to 13,000 feet over the top of the massif between Grenoble & the French Riviera.

The last peaks pass beneath me just as the last light leaves the sky to the west. I lower the nose, and remember warm nights drinking wine, watching the lights of the promenade shimmering back from the low waves of the med breaking on the beaches of the Riviera. 

Lille -> Geneva

 The next morning, I depart south. I'm going to make my way down to the Alps and see some dramatic mountains, but first I must fly across northern and central France.

The cloud cover I flew through has overtaken me during the night, and once again I find myself climbing into the grey murk of overcast rainclouds. This is a 400 mile trip, at an average speed of about 160mph over the ground (there's a tail wind, luckily...) so that's about 2 1/2 hours, in zero visibility.

This is the point where I wonder if I'm being stupid. What's the point if I can't see anything? But I remember the lesson I learned - the unexpected wonder of the red sunset over Lille the night before - and plough on. Through the grey soup.

I take the time to try to work out more about the navigation system, and make some progress. I learn why the autopilot tried to kill me over Birmingham, and how to set it up for the correct mode for climbing, cruising, following waypoints, and even how to select an automatic instrument approach for an airport.

At one point I descend to see if the cloud base has risen at all. It hasn't. I break out about 500 feet above a farm, with hedges and trees racing past the cockpit windows. In front of me, the ground rises into the mist. Back up we go...

Eventually we arrive at Lake Geneva. I was expecting a beautiful view of the lake and the hills around it, but it's all just grey. Luckily the cloud is a bit higher over the lake on the approach into the airport, so I have 2,000 feet through which I can actually see the water. But the airport end of the lake is... a bank of fog. Can't see the airport at all.

So, I put the knowledge I've just gained to use. I type in the airport code, select an approach pattern from the menu, and proudly pick up the landing guide signal - which tells me whether I'm too far left, right up or down from the ideal glide path down to the runway. And when I'm less than half a mile out, the clouds thin and YES! The runway's right there!

I AM VICTORIOUS!

I set the plane down, hoping the weather will clear for the next leg.

Bournemouth -> Lille

 The Weather. Has. Changed.

I load up and a light drizzle patters on the windscreen, with gray overcast of indeterminate height and depth filling the sky. My plan is to fly almost directly due East, take in the sights of the south coast - the Isle of Weight, the White cliffs of dover, and cross over Calais before landing in Lille.

Instead, I climb into clouds. Grey, featureless clouds. Rain continues to drum on the windscreen. I climb and I climb, with no idea where the tops are. 4,000 feet? Nope, Grey cloud. 5,000? Nope... on and on I climb, watching on the GPS as the Isle of Wight slips behind me. I consider turning off live weather and picking something that'll let me actually see the world passing under my feet. But no, that's cheating. So I float in endless grey cloud, apparently hanging stationary with only the drone of the engine and the instruments to give clue that anything is happening at all.

The grey begins to lighten. And then, at 9,000 feet, I burst out into a world of blue skies and towering mountains of white all around me. It is amazing! I've broken out! And then I plough into the next wall of white and can see nothing once again.

Finally at 10,000 feet, I reach the height necessary to be out of the clouds more than I'm in them. It's fantastic. The sun is beginning to set behind me, and it illuminates the scene before me, the clouds beginning to take on the faintest yellow. I level off the nose, kick on the autopilot, and reach cruising speed (110 knots according to the instruments, which means 130 knots through the air - the higher you are, the more the speed indicator under-reads as there's less air pushing on the sensor).

It's a beautiful scene, and the game informs me of the location of some other players who are also playing with real time and weather settings. Somehow that makes it more real - knowing that I'm not alone in this virtual space. I realise I've forgotten all about the White Cliffs, this is better.

It doesn't last, however. Halfway over the channel, the clouds get even thicker and tower higher than I could ever hope to fly (the Cessna tops out at around 14,000 feet - a combination of the thin air not giving the wings enough purchase and that same thin air not giving the engine enough oxygen to deliver the power needed to climb further). I once again plunge into a wall of cloud and this time the light quickly sinks into a darker grey than I've yet seen; this cloud is huge, and I'm going to be in it for a while.

And then... peril. Ice crystals begin to form on the windows. The temperature gauge reads -2C. This is a problem, because the Cessna does not have a de-icing system, beyond a little heater in the probe that determines speed and altitude. As ice forms on the leading edges - the front of the wings and tail fins, the nose, even the propeller blades - the plane is picking up weight and losing its aerodynamic properties.

I notice that the speed is starting to drop, and the autopilot is having to hold the nose higher and higher above the horizon just to maintain 10,000 feet. My Cessna is turning into a block of ice, and it's starting to fly like one. As the speed drops below 95 knots, I kick off the autopilot and drop the nose. The plane drops like a stone - even descending at 2,500 feet/ minute, the speed barely breaks 120 knots where usually it'd rocket up towards the never exceed speed.

I watch the temperature gauge, and it ticks u to +1 around 6,000 feet. I'm going to need to keep descending and hit air warm enough to actually melt the ice that's accumulated. I settle at 2,000 feet, where the thicker air lets me set up to cruise again. I'm still in dense cloud - and now, with clouds almost 2 miles thick blanketing the English Channel and the sun setting, it's pretty bleak. Once the ice has all cleared, I decide to descent and see if I can find the cloud base, and I don't break out until I'm down to 800 feet - just in time to see the French coast pass beneath me. 800 feet is a bit low to cruise though, so I climb back into the gloom and spend the next 20 minutes before Lille playing with the Garmin navigation options. Unnoticed with my head down in the cockpit, the clouds around me turn from grey through yellow through orange into red.

15 miles out from Lille, I break out of the overcast into a strange, deep red sunset. As the sun has set I've been travelling east, and France is an hour ahead. And now the sun is falling below the horizon, filtering through all that thick cloud over the channel. I follow the autoroute towards Lille, and wheel round the far side of the airport to land into the sunset as the last of the light fades from the sky. I have to use the headlights on the plane to taxi to the parking.

This has been an interesting flight on two counts; the first, I am now abroad, and everywhere is therefore slightly more exciting and exotic. Secondly, the flight was so much more interesting and involved because the weather was outside my control. I would *never* have chosen this weather when I was setting the flight up. It happened to me, and gave me moments I would not have experienced otherwise. There's probably a life lesson in there somewhere, but it's time to go into virtual Lille and have a virtual fancy French meal.

Wolverhampton -> Bournemouth

 The next morning, and feeling chipper and confident, I load up parked at Wolverhampton. The largely clear skies of the flights so far have filled with fluffy cumulous clouds, floating amid a cheery blue sky - perfect Indian Summer weather.

The GPS is programmed to take me south, but first I must make the inevitable pilgrimage every flight simmer must undertake; I will find my house, and the local points of interest.

It's actually easier said than done because the West Midlands is one large conurbation, all the surrounding towns merging seamlessly into the city of Birmingham. But I have an ace card up my navigational sleeve; I live near the tallest hills in the area, right on the south-west tip of the city. And I can already see them!

It's a 10 minute flight, conducted at 500 feet - low enough to make out the patterns of streets and buildings. There's the big M&S - I turn towards my road. And there's the supermarket which means... YES! MY HOUSE! It's really there! And virtually there too!

And the old folk's home at the end of the road. And the trees, where there are actually trees. And the... oh, my garage is a cute little bungalow. That's way better than reality.

Pilgrimage complete, I turn south, and engage the autopilot. It starts trying to kill me by ploughing the plane into a field. I turn off the autopilot, and circle trying to work out what I did wrong. I can't work out what I did wrong. I press random buttons on the perimeter of the LCD screens involved with navigation. I engage autopilot, and this time it brings me round on a southerly course, with the Malvern hills passing the right hand window. I still don't know what I did, but it's working now.

For this flight, I'm trying something different - rather than a direct-line GPS course, I'm going to fly south, then turn left at Cheltenham, checking out the big Donut-shaped GCHQ building, And stumble across a disused airfield which I've not been able to identify.

As I make my way south east of Stonehenge, I notice the clouds are thickening up over towards London, though there's plenty of blue sky for me.

Then Southampton and the Solent are in front of me, and I shut off autopilot to guide the plane to the right, past the coast of the Isle of Wight, and buzz the beach at Bournemouth before pulling back round and coming in to land.

Edinburgh -> Wolverhampton

Right. Time to get some real miles behind us!

This is a night flight, and my first encounter with the night time graphics engine in the game. It's amazing! As we lift into the clear night air out of Edinburgh and turn south, I see street lights, houses, red collision lights on high structures, and gradually the glow of Glasgow and the Clyde Estuary.

So far the game has amazed me - as someone who played flight sims as a boy where the graphics were at best evocative of a 3d space, to see what we can do in 2020 is beyond cool. But this is the first moment that enchants me.

I top out my climb at 8,000 feet. It takes my little Cessna a full 15 minutes to get there, barely 1/4 of the height an airliner flies at. Which I like, because it means your altitude feels like an achievement as you adjust the fuel mixture hitting the engine to account for the thinner air.

As I hit that height and level the nose, the moonlight reflects off the engine cowling out there in front of the windscreen. The outside air temperature is -1 degree C, and the weather is still holding clear and crisp. My eyes are drawn to the horizon where, 80 miles ahead, the moonlight is also reflecting off the distant Solway Firth. And even beyond that, the hills of the Lake District cut up into the last thin strip of twilight left by the sun which set almost two hours earlier - nothing but the reflected glow of the sunset happening far out into the Atlantic at that moment.

It is magical. So magical that I forget to take a screenshot.

The funny thing is how immersive it is. An hour later, the lights of Manchester and Liverpool are laid out in front of the windscreen and the earth below is positively luminous. I trace out the M6, a road so often travelled since I was a boy. I can see where it crosses the Manchester ship Canal, The junction that you take to head towards Chester & north Wales, and on the horizon the midlands glow. Just like in real life, the screenshots I take don't do it justice - in the cold light of day they just look underexposed.

But I was up there. And as I rolled the wing round to make my final approach into Wolverhampton airport just 10 miles from where I was sat playing the game, I could almost imagine the faint sound of a propeller engine drifting over on the night breeze.

Inverness -> Edinburgh

 We start the journey south. A relatively short hop down to Edinburgh. Just over an hour in the Cessna as the crow flies and as it happens, that's how we're gonna do it; straight line down over the Cairngorms, which are about as isolated as you get in the UK with just the A9 snaking around beneath the flight path.

Turning south from Inverness, the ground rises in front of the plane and I pick 6k feet as a good height to avoid crashing into mountains but still appreciate the sight of them rising up towards me.

There's a lot of distilleries and places where you can catch a hearty pub meal. The road rolls round to the west at Aviemore, and I carry straight on over the peaks, re-joining its path at Pitlochry where a year ago I had a cheese & ham toastie and debated leftist politics & Scottish independence with dad.

The Firth of Fourth rolls into view in front, and then I pick out Arthur's Mount, a hill within easy walking distance of Edinburgh city centre. 15 years ago I climbed to the top on a whim after going shopping, Tesco bag of groceries and all.

I commit to a ludicrous entry to the landing path to go over the royal mile and see Edinburgh castle, perched atop an old volcanic plug. I was there in March with my wife, but we didn't go in because the pandemic was just starting to bite.

There are some passenger jets coming in on the same approach path as me - based on real life flights taken from Flightradar24, I believe. Usually on approach you get your speed down for landing nice and early and then make a steady advance towards your landing point, but I keep the throttle full on to keep my speed up until the last possible moment as I slide in between two Airbusses to touch down at what's actually a relatively busy airport.

Tiree -> Inverness

 The sea slips beneath me as I fly southeast towards the island of Jura, home of one of my favourite whiskies. On the horizon to my left, the Isle of Mull hangs off my wingtip.

I've picked a relatively low cruise; 2,500 feet. That's lower than a lot of the terrain I'll be flying past, but it's a clear day so there's no risk of accidentally ploughing into the side of a mountain. The plan: Fly round the south of the Isle of Mull towards Oban, strike straight over the high ground towards the Bridge of Orchy, which is at the high end of the glen that sweeps down towards Loch Lomond, then head north and follow the A82 over one of my favourite places in the world; the high ground that leads to the top of Glencoe, site of an infamous massacre in 1692 that has left bad blood that still exists after centuries (my wife's grandmother would never eat Campbells soup!).

And that's exactly what I do. It looks *exactly* like I remember it from times I've driven it, and wished I could lift the nose of the car and swoop around the huge amphitheatre surrounded by bare peaks. The Scottish landscape is amazingly, beautifully devoid of complication in places. No forests, fields, nothing. The people cleared the forests that covered the whole country, and a thousand years later the gentry cleared the people that had made it their home - more infamy, the Highland Clearances that saw so many subsidence farmers forced off land they'd called their home for generations, to the cities or across the sea to the new world. They have left behind a barren landscape of grass, low heather, and haggis runs.

I follow the road just a few hundred feet up. At the top of Glen Coe I drop the nose and throttle back, descending with the road towards the ocean end and Lock Leven. In the glen, I meet my first incongruous piece of terrain - a lake, wrongly placed so that it is sitting on the steep slope of a mountain. That... is not real. It's not really there. Nobody could convince water, the laziest of all the geographical forces, to climb a mountain like that.

Apart from that ludicrous faux pas, the glen is as I remember. Craggy rocks, a river plunging down beneath the level of the road, sheep grazing on the hillsides. Just... ignore the 45-degree lake...

And look ahead, as Ben Nevis wheels into view. It's the highest mountain in Britain, at 4,400 feet, and flying past mountains is just cool. Simple as. I'd like to climb it one day, and it should probably happen before I get old. If we survive Covid, I'll head up it. I pass over Fort William and swing round the north of the peak to start working my way up the Great Glen.

Navigating to Inverness is very easy from here, even though it's on the other coast. You just follow the Glen, it's an old tectonic fault rift that makes a straight line between Fort William and Inverness. I settle down at 1,000 feet, with the hills either side of the Glen rising above me.

The west end of Loch Ness passes beneath, and I try to spot a hotel I stayed in 20 years ago on a family holiday with my gran in Fort Augustus. And the next 15 minutes looking for the Loch Ness monster to no avail.

Inverness hoves into view, and I descend towards the airport.

The landing is... survivable. Got to give myself space to improve after all.

The Beginning - Tiree, Scotland,

 

Is this a silly idea? Have I gone mad? My plan: Play the new Microsoft Flight Simulator. Go on a tour. Take off from an airport, fly to a different airport. Next day, start at that destination airport and fly somewhere else. Repeat. No magical jumps - Wherever I end up, I can trace a continuous path from my starting point.

I think my motivation is sound.

The entire world is represented in the game, using a mixture of high resolution satellite photos, Bing map data, photogrammety where available (actual pictures of real building fronts etc) and elevation data sourced from governments, national surveyors etc. AI looks at these pieces of data and procedurally generates 3D buildings, pylons, wind turbines, trees etc where it believes they would actually be. So if you want to go and look at your house, it's there. Maybe there won't be the right number of storeys on a tower block. Maybe it'll think (as it does with mine) that your breeze block garage is a cute mini-bungalow - mortgage valuation team, take note! But in broad strokes and down to a surprising level of detail, it gets it right.

My logic is thus; if I can go anywhere in the world, the choice loses meaning and perspective. Hawaii one day, approach Lukla airport high in the Himalayas the next, then pop over to SoCal before finishing up with a brief flight over Uluru in Australia. All represented in exquisite detail, yet with no effort involved on the part of the player can you really appreciate it?

Many might answer: "Who cares?" I say: "NO!"

I don't have a plan at this point beyond broad strokes. I'm going to start on Tiree, an island just off the Scottish mainland, because why not? Scotland is where I was born, it's a beautiful place, and I'll start the sim off with a landscape I'm familiar with. Then I'll fly down to where I live in the middle of England. Then over towards the continent. From there, let's just see.

My aircraft of choice: The Cessna 172 with a glass cockpit. "Glass cockpit" just means that instead of a load of old steampunk style dials and indicators, it's got a nice modern Garmin screen - Autopilot, GPS navigation. But it also flies slow and low enough that I'll be in the landscape, and not just cruising so high above the world that it doesn't really matter where I am.

So... let's begin.

A word on the weather; it is based upon real weather reports. And I'm not going to deviate from that. If it's raining it's raining and that's the way it is. It's out of my hands. So it is with some trepidation that I watch the loading screen. It's late September, and the weather in Scotland may well be rubbish.

It is not. The game loads up, and I'm sat in the cockpit of my virtual Cessna, parked in grass. The cockpit screens are dark, I can hear the sound of other traffic filtering through the windows. Small fluffy clouds float in an otherwise blue sky. It's been ages since I played a flight sim. I try to remember how to even turn the power on. Down here by the door? No. Up on the roof? No. Were this a real aircraft I'd expect security guards to be running towards me in horror right now, as engineers dropped their clipboards in dismay that a Total Bloody Idiot has somehow got to the point of trying to steal a plane.

I find the power switches - battery and avionics. I flick them and with a beep the screens come into life.

Ah! There's an ignition key just like a car! I remember! The engine catches and dies. Hmmm. Then I remember the fuel mixture knob - it's all the way out. Push it in, try again, the engine catches and revs up briefly before settling into idle with a nice reassuring roar.

The air traffic control system is pretty easy to use in the game. I announce my intentions, taxi to the end of the runway, and push the throttle forward.

As the engine's idling turns into a high power roar, the nose immediately starts pulling to the right and I start flying toward the side of the runway. I overcorrect with the rudder control, and nearly crash off to the left. My virtual life flashes before my eyes. Then fate intervenes, and I realise I'm flying! The altimeter rolls up - 50 feet, 100... airspeed is 80 knots. This is fine! My journey begins. Flying is easy. I'm a master. The nose of my Cessna has rolled up far above the horizon during these short seconds of self congratulation. Airspeed 55 knots and falling. I'm going to stall and fall out of the sky. Doomed. What folly!

I push the nose down and see the fields falling away quickly to the ocean. The mechanics of flight are coming back to me now: The faster you go, the more the nose wants to rise of its own accord. The slower you go, the more it wants to sink below the horizon. It's all about the balance of forces - the plane has a centre of gravity. We're all happy with that concept - every object has one place where you can balance it - where there's the same amount of weight on all sides of that point.

Are you following so far?

The wings produce lift, which pushes you upwards and counteracts gravity. This lift? It's got a central point too - the centre of lift. It's the point where all the parts of the plane producing lift - the wings, the little tail wings at the back, sometimes even the body of the plane itself - balance equally.

Now, here's the fun part. The centre of gravity doesn't change based on your speed - it's down to the weight of the plane, and the weight of the passengers. The centre of lift does. In the Cessna, the faster you go the further forward the centre of lift is. When it's in front of the centre of gravity, it pulls the nose higher into the sky. When you slow down, it moves backwards and the nose wants to sink.

Luckily, makers of aircraft are aware of this, and planes have "trim" tabs on the wings that are used to offset this. So instead of always having to pull back on the stick to stop the nose falling, or push forward to stop it rising, you can adjust the trim until the plane happily holds itself level at whatever speed you've chosen to travel at.

This remembered, the flight becomes much more orderly. I do some turns, some swoops, some steep climbs and dives, staffed a couple of vehicles that looked for all the world like Royal Mail vans, and then turn the nose to the east to begin my journey towards the Scottish mainland.

My trusty little Cessna pulls itself up into the sky at the "best rate of climb speed" of 75 knots, its little 150bhp engine whirling away in front of me. The rugged coast slides past the side window. We're on our way.