| Adventures In An Escapade |
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| Written by Chris Wills | ||||||||
| Wednesday, 31 January 2007 | ||||||||
Page 3 of 6 From Abbeville our route was south east to take us north of the Paris air-space heading for our next destination airfield called Epernay, just south of Reims. On this leg we passed Amiens which was where the famous WW2 DH Mosquito attack on Amiens Jail (''Operation Jericho'') took place in 1944, when a precision attack from the air knocked down the prison walls to allow members of the French resistance to escape. As our services weren’t required on this occasion, we bimbled past, a respectful distance from the town. Epernay airfield was not that easy to spot as all the runways were grass but after 1hour 50min in the air we arrived in the overhead and made the circuit calls to land. This time I threw in an extra ‘piste dégagée’ to announce I had vacated the runway after landing. This evidently impressed my fellow pilots to the extent that I was subsequently told that as I could speak French (!!!) it was my job to phone the local taxi firm and arrange transport into town. I put it off as long as I could but putting up a tiny tent only takes so long, so with some trepidation, I rang the number and did my best to arrange taxis for fourteen (oui, vraiment, quatorze!) people at seven pm. Fortunately, at the appointed hour only two minibuses turned up (not the fourteen I was half expecting) and we set off into town to eat. Next to Reims, Epernay is the main town for the production and shipment of champagne and many famous cellars/houses such as Moët et Chandon, Mercier, Brut, Perrier, Dom Perignon and de Castellane are located here. Our taxi ride took us past the headquarters of many of these famous names. Naturally we had to supplement the meal with a bottle – it would have been inconsiderate not to! At the end of the e vening we emerged from the restaurant just as the heavens opened and a spectacular thunderstorm lit up the sky, but thanks to Messrs Moët et Chandon, somehow the prospect of a night in the tiny tent didn’t seem to matter…. We were all up fairly early next morning ready to make the most of the day. The previous day we had lost time due to channel crossing formalities and also having to put our clocks forward an hour on entering France. Today we were expecting to complete our journey to Nördlingen in three easy legs and it looked as if the weather was playing ball too after the fireworks display of the previous night. |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 31 January 2007 ) | ||||||||
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