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.