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My Working visit to South Africa

It was Saturday 1st of October that Wendy and I arrived in her homeland of South Africa,  having experienced an hour's train delay that nearly caused us to miss the11 hour flight from Gatwick, a two hour internal flight from Johannesburg to George Airport and a further 2 hour wait in George for our luggage that was sent on the following plane! Many thanks to Nationwide airlines though who did everything to minimise the suffering with some lovely 3 course meals and great cabin crew.

The first thing to strike you about South Africa is its sheer size, it is vast, and whenever you get in the car it is a drive of at least an hour or 100Kms. South Africa is almost 1600 Kms from the East to West coasts and we drove a total of 6000 Kms in the 3 weeks we stayed there.

Wendys Parents are Dave and Tish and they run the townhouse guest house in a small town called Uniondale. The town is urrounded by forts that were once used by the British Army  as lookout posts during the Boer wars. Uniondale is on the Garden route and runs alongside the Indian Ocean from Witsand in the East to Plettenberg Bay in the West..

Week one saw us visit Port Elizabeth some 300Kms away on  the East coast of Africa where we took in a visit to the Oceanarium which is well worth the visit, as it has a Dolphin show as well as the most enormous  indoor seawater tank containing hundreds of local fish including some quite large sharks.

Week two included a trip to Hermanus Bay where we stayed in the Windsor hotel www.windsorhotel.co.za right on the cliff front, where we watched whales glide past the rocks on our arrival. The very next morning while sat in the dining room having breakfast, a Southern Right Whale leapt from the water no more than 100 yards from where we were eating, so Camera and tripod in hand I raced across the road and managed to get some good photos of these lovely creatures in the bay where they come each year to mate.

The Southern Right Whale differs from most other whales in the following three ways: It has no Dorsal fin on its back: when it exhales there is a v shaped cloud above the water : and the presence of callosities on its head. They spend December through to May in the cold Polar regions of  the Southern Hemisphere where food is present in quantity. June through to November is spent around the shallow coastal waters of Southern Africa, South America and Australia. The shallow sandy-bottomed and sheltered bays are perfect for mating, calving, nursing their young and resting.

We drove on towards Cape town and passed Cape Agulhas, where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean, the southern most point of the continent of Africa and the final resting ground of many small and large ships run aground on the rocks below the lighthouse by a treacherous sea.

We approached Cape town via Somerset West and as we got closer we saw the brightly painted township of Khayelitsha where over 1 million black people live in near poverty conditions, the township straddles the road for almost 10 Kms. On our arrival at Cape town the one huge sight is Table Mountain ,which towers completely over the city from every point.

At Table Mountain a  super fast cable car ride takes you up over 1000 metres high in 3 minutes and some of the most spectacular views that one can see on this Earth. The vast sprawling city of Cape Town below and the huge Table Bay beyond to one side, Camps Bay on another and finally False Bay and the huge mountains leading the eye away into the distance. www.tablemountain.net.

After leaving Cape town we drove back through Mossel Bay on the way to Sedgefield to spend the night. Knysna is a beautiful place to visit and shop, we bought some souvenirs from the travelling Zambian people who live and work close to the lake. We had lunch at Knysna head before travelling up through the Knysna pass into the Mountains and on towards Uniondale, I think 40Km per hour is the fastest we went on the bumpy surface.

The three weeks went really quickly with so much to see and visit, my only regret was not getting to see Victoria falls but it is so far North that it would have meant yet another plane journey.

More information can be found at

www.southafrica.net

www.monkeyland.co.za

www.birdsofeden.co.za

www.cango.co.za

www.dolphinstudies.co.za

www.highgate.co.za

www.featherbed.co.za

www.grgamelodge.co.za

www.hueyclub.co.za

Red Arrows at Torquay Regatta

Sunday 20th August at  6pm and a huge crowd awaited the
arrival over Torbay of the Red Arrows , It had been an agonising wait all day to
see if the display would go ahead due to the low cloud cover during the day.

The display was reduced in time to 17 minutes because of the
conditions and some of the high level manoeuvres had to be cut including the
famous ' heart' , the caterpilar and  the vixen loop, however the display
was an awesome spectacle to view from Corbyn head beach rocks with the planes
repeatedly flying low over our heads.

We witnessed the diamond 9 arrival, the swan bend , their apollo
roll and their famous champagne split before they split up and arrived from
different directions.

The ' barrel rolls' where two hawks fly straight at each other
from opposite sides of the bay, one streaming blue and the other red smoke
behind them, and roll away from each other at the last possible moment was
fantastic and was repeated a further two times.

It is indeed unusual to have the Red Arrows display team appear
on a Sunday in Torquay for Regatta week, but judging by the crowds it proved
very popular.

The Pilots

Since mid-1966 there have been nine Red Arrows display pilots each year,
including the Team Leader.

All Red Arrows pilots are volunteers. To be eligible to apply for the Team,
pilots must have completed at least one operational tour on a front line fast
jet such as the Tornado, Harrier and Jaguar, and have a minimum of 1,500 flying
hours. Pilots must also have been assessed in their annual reports as being
above average in their operational role. These provisos mean that the volunteers
are usually Flight Lieutenants in their late twenties or early thirties.

Each display pilot stays with the Team for a three-year tour of duty. The
reason for this is that by changing three pilots each year the experience level
within the Team is optimised. At the end of their tour of duty with The Red
Arrows, pilots usually return to "front-line" RAF squadrons.

Each year, around thirty pilots apply for the Team. A short list of nine
spend a week with The Red Arrows, and are put though a rigorous programme of
interviews, flying tests and assessments of their personal qualities and
motivation. It is vitally important that all The Red Arrows’ display pilots not
only trust each other’s skills but get on well together. The current pilots make
their final choices at a closed meeting chaired by the Commandant of the Central
Flying School (CFS).

If one of the pilots goes sick during the display season, or for any other
reason is not able to fly, the Team is able to fly an 8-ship formation. There
are no reserve pilots for safety reasons; one spare pilot could not possibly
learn all nine positions to the standard required. The pilots always fly in the
same position within the formation and it takes an intensive six-month training
programme for each pilot to become thoroughly proficient at flying in his
position.

In addition to the nine display pilots, another pilot known as ‘Red 10’, the
Team's Road Manager, flies another Hawk aircraft. This is sometimes called to
act as a spare aircraft in the case of an engineering problem while the Team is
away from base

The Full team this year are as follows :-

Red one :- Wing Commander Dicky Patounas

Red two :- Flight leuitenant Greg Perilleux

Red Three :-Flight leuitenant Damian Ellacott

Red four :-Squadron leader Greg Morley

Red five :-Flight leuitenant Paul O' Grady

Red six :-Flight leuitenant Simon Stevens

Red seven :-Flight leuitenant Jim Turner

Red Eight :-Flight leuitenant David Slow

Red Nine :-Squadron leader Martin Higgins

Red ten :-Flight leuitenant Andy Robins

Mambo appeals with fashion show