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I stuck my head out from the sleeping bag at about 6am.
The sun was already high, the sky blue, but we needed coffffeeeeeee. We had a quick breakfast and afterwards, while I called my cousin Jenny to try and locate my sister and mother, Olivier took Bicci and Gloria for
a flight. Bicci helped us by taking us to the fuel station to collect fuel on the back of his motorbike. It was great to ride on his bike – I have the same bike at home and really enjoy riding it.
We headed to Barten airfield near to Liverpool where
we met my mother, my sister Sue and my cousin Jenny and her hubby Geoff. My family has given me so much support over the years with my flying and I like to call my mother my most enthusiastic supporter. We spent a
great few hours together before refuelling and heading off to meet up with some of Olivier's friends near Rugby.
As soon as I took off something happened with my
radio – although I could hear the ATC and Olivier perfectly, my radio was not broadcasting. Olivier immediately realised that I had a problem and flew next to me and said, "turn right if you can hear me." I banked
immediately right. We still had a problem though. I had the frequencies and the map and route and Olivier had the radio. We battled along for a while – but it was difficult, so when an abandoned airfield with a
racetrack around it appeared underneath us, I dived down and landed on one of the straights of the racetrack. The sun was setting so we had to be quick. I gave Olivier the frequencies and directions and we leapt
into the air and raced southwards to try and beat the darkness. But, it wasn't to be – we soon realised that the headwind, the slight haze and the cloud cover meant that it would be totally dark at our destination.
I managed to navigate us to a microlight airfield called Arclid. The airfield was quite far from any shop or a pub, so Olivier took off again in search of a pub. He returned 5 minutes later and announced that he had
found a great pub with a reasonably flat field right next to it. Within 2 minutes our trikes were parked outside the pub and we were inside enjoying a pint of their best bitter, mate – for grub we had roast chicken
and chips! It was raining softly when we stepped outside after a few hours, so we pitched the tent and hit the sack.
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