Tag Archives: air travel

Apr 12 2024
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Daily Post, Landscape

Crossing into Namibia

Friday 12th April 2024, 12.05pm (day, 4,614)

Kavango river, 12/4/24

This is the fourth shot ever on this blog to definitely feature the territory of two different countries, and all the other three have included England (two where English land was seen together with Wales, and one with France). However, after departing Manchester on the plane shown yesterday, and changing in Addis Ababa, I am now nowhere near England nor will be for some weeks.

The left-hand two-thirds of this shot, including almost all the irrigated land, is Namibia, where I landed about an hour after this point to begin my fortnight’s holiday. On the right, Angola, with the Kavango river forming the boundary between the two. Google Maps makes it possible to identify the location quite precisely: the irrigated circles are the Ndonga Linena Greenscheme, if you want to check my navigation.

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Apr 12 2024
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Daily Post, Transport

Ethiopian tail feathers

Thursday 11th April 2024, 5.30pm (day 4,613)

Ethiopian airlines, 11/4/24

Finally, I’m off. This evening, this vehicle constituted flight ET729 from Manchester to Addis Ababa, via (for some reason) Geneva: the service that saved the day back in January last year when everything went tits up due to a few snowflakes, but that is in the past. I like the Ethiopian Airlines logo, which gives it a suitably avian feel. This will be my last photo taken in the UK until 20th May.

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Mar 12 2024
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Daily Post, Landscape

Llandudno (the only sunny place in the UK?)

Monday 11th March 2024, 11.15am (day 4,582)

Llandudno, from air, 11/3/24

Having had the chance to survey reasonably large portions of Ulster, the Irish Sea, North Wales and bits of north-west England on my flight home — I would like to declare that at 11:15 this morning, Llandudno and the Great Orme, both definitely depicted here, constituted the only part of this whole slab of the world that could possibly be seeing any sunshine.

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Apr 06 2023
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Daily Post, Landscape

The Pyrenees

Wednesday 5th April 2023, 1.05pm (day 4,241)

The Pyrenees, 5/4/23

I think that, by law, and certainly by my own moral code, all aeroplane windows should be kept sparkling clean. The one I had to use on our flight home from Barcelona was noticeably grubby, so apologies for the ensuing blemishes on this shot (I know they’re there). Still, the view was good, at least while we were crossing the barrier between Spain and France, that is, the Pyrenees: mountains I have never visited, but they’re on the list. Named, apparently, after a woman who was raped by Hercules, gave birth to a serpent, and was then torn apart by wild animals. These old myths took no prisoners, did they?

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Feb 11 2023
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna, Transport

The calm under the flightpath

Saturday 11th February 2023, 2.00pm (day 4,188)

Horses under Heathrow, 11/2/23

These have to be among the world’s most stoic horses. The poles in this field are one end of the series of guidance beacons for one of the runways at Heathrow. Gigantic flying machines like the one seen here are coming into land every few minutes, and the noise is incredible. But they don’t seem all that bothered.

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Feb 06 2023
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Landscape

Home, from 15,000 feet (approx.)

Sunday 5th February 2023, 12.30pm (day 4,182)

Hebden Bridge from above, 5/2/23

From leaving Gareth’s place in St Helena on Saturday morning, to arriving back in Hebden Bridge at about 3.30pm on Sunday afternoon, was a 28-hour journey. Had the pilot of the third aircraft felt like it, I could have been dropped off three hours earlier: but I probably wouldn’t have survived that experience. Nevertheless, here we are, directly over home, with my house just about visible to the bottom right of this image. Centre bottom is Heptonstall and up the valley curves to Midgehole and the woods of Hardcastle Crags. I don’t know whether we were actually at 15,000 feet here, but it’s a reasonable guess — if it looks lower, I did use a certain amount of zoom.

No more flights for a while now: there’s work to do at home. Well, at least until I go away again.

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Jan 20 2023
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Daily Post, Landscape

Addis Ababa (unexpectedly)

Friday 20th January 2023, 7.05am (day 4,166)

Addis Ababa, 20/1/23

Until late morning yesterday, if you’d have suggested this blog might feature the capital of Ethiopia at some point in the near future, I would not have treated you seriously, but it’s amazing where one ends up (at 7 in the morning) when airlines are obliged to work out alternative routes of travel for passengers let down by non-optimal handling of local weather conditions (see yesterday). In fact I have always quite wanted to go to Ethiopia, it’s definitely on the bucket list — but a 90-minute stopover in Addis Ababa airport won’t really count when I come to sum up the itinerary of my life at some future date. It looked good from the plane, though, and one day I might come back. I like the flash of sunlight off the building to the right. Always get a window seat — always.

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Jan 20 2023
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Daily Post, Transport

View from Terminal 2

Thursday 19th January 2023, 4.20pm (day 4,165)

Airport sunset, 19/1/23

At the point in time that this photo was taken, I should have been somewhere over the Congo, maybe Zambia. This, however, is definitely not the interior of Africa. Having got up at 4am, by 6am I and a few dozen other people were sitting on a plane at Manchester Airport waiting to depart, only then the powers-that-be decided that due to a few snowflakes falling, nothing could move. Time passed, and by 9am we were all back in Terminal 2, the MAN – AMS leg of my journey wiped from existence. (Other excessive flight delays to have featured on here: Bergen, Nov. 2012; Keflavik, Jul.2019 [still the epitome].)

I finally left the ground about two and a half hours after capturing this shot. I will still make my final destination, and already know that a completely unexpected new country is going to make the blog tomorrow, perhaps that can be seen as a minor compensation. At least I won’t be seeing any more snow for a couple of weeks, that’s guaranteed.

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Dec 01 2021
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Daily Post, Landscape

The dune sea, at sunset

Wednesday 1st December 2021, 4.45pm (day 3,751)

Dune sea, 1/12/21

The flight home. The Sahara looked astonishing: this was a day when I wish I could break my own rules and post more than one photo. The River Niger certainly was worth seeing, a braid of blue and green running through a sandy wasteland. We must have crossed that somewhere in Mali.

But instead I will go with this shot; for much of the three hours it took to cross the desert I was thinking, hmmm, well it’s certainly barren, but more rocky than sandy. But then came this sea, this ocean of dunes, tinged by the setting sun. This must be far enough north to be somewhere in Algeria. Not that national boundaries really mean a lot here. If anything this is Arrakis. Had a gigantic sandworm crested out of this stuff with Fremen on its back, I would not have been surprised.

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Nov 10 2021
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Daily Post, Transport

Arrival on St Helena

Tuesday 9th November 2021, 12.25pm (day 3,729)

Arrival on St Helena, 9/11/21

Is this working? Hmmm, seems to be.

OK then, I am successfully online on one of the world’s most remote islands, 1,200 miles from the nearest other land. The landing — on a bare airstrip perched on top of piles of volcanic cinder — was not as rough as I’d been led to believe it might be. Ten days of quarantine await, however; you and I both will have plenty of opportunities to inspect my accommodation between now and my release on Friday 19th.

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