HARELINES

LONDON TO SYDNEY AND EVER ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

(or round-and-round, there and back, etc.)

by David Hare

Wednesday 16th May 2001: Iceland

We  duly (as opposed to unduly, presumably) departed Toronto City Centre on Monday, and made a happily uneventful journey to Gander.  There was much cloud on the way, a bit of icing, and poor visibility at lower levels, but on the whole a good trip.

Tuesday was a different matter; with all our best laid plans ganging seriously agley.  The intention had been to return to the UK by the Southern route - Azores and the continent - mainly because I hadn't done it and wanted it in the log book, but also because we felt that after a not-too-warm Seattle, and a positively icy Gander, we had earned some sunshine.  But alas!  The Azores were reporting fog and cloud on the deck, with no improvement in sight before Friday at best.  So we chickened out, like wise mice, and decided to change to the Northern route.  Our beaker full of the warm South will have to wait until next time.  (There ain't gonna be no next time!).  That's why we are in Iceland, hoping for Scotland on Wednesday and Fairoaks on Thursday.  Actually, we felt better about it when we heard from the friendly RAF sergeant looking after their shop in Gander that a flight of fast jets coming the other way had been delayed for the same reason.

So we had a pleasant, if very long, flight from Gander to Keflavik.  The departure from Gander itself was delayed by fog and low cloud, but eventually when we thought we could see far enough down the runway we took off into a three hundred foot ceiling and broke out into sunshine a quarter of an hour later.  That lasted most of the way to Keflavik, where we arrived tired but reasonably satisfied with ourselves some nine hours later.  We had thought about stopping at Narssarssuaq, but the sight of Greenland's icy mountains peering up at us out of the cloud layer, coupled with fair weather reports from Iceland (which for the benefit of the cynical I should say we had been promised long before we left Gander) confirmed our decision otherwise.  We landed at Keflavik at 11.30 p.m., so it was still quite light.

The plan now is to make Stornoway, or similar, tomorrow, God willing, and Fairoaks on Thursday.  So this will be the final en route report, and we'll hope to report safe arrival later in the week.

David Kierle at Toronto

Greenland's icy mountains

"Daylight" approach to Keflavic