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The 2006 European AYA meeting - by Nigel Thomas, President.

June was a lovely month in northern Europe. The early part of it was particularly decent. If you had taken the trouble to pop your head out of your windows, you would have heard the gentle warbling birds and Lycomings.

The more astute of you would have noticed that those very same Lycomings all appeared to be heading south and west. And the really clever of you would have deduced that those very same Lycomings were pulling a variety of Grumman chariots across the skies from all parts of Europe. Yes! Any educated aviator would have instantly recognised the gathering of the massed AYAers starting off on their trek to attend the 2006 AYA European annual fly-in.

This year was our third annual gathering to be held at Marmande (LFDM), and it didn't disappoint. It had been gloriously organised by the stalwarts of the Escadrille Orion of Marmande and more especially Dominique Covre and the Escadrille team, all ably assisted by the language skills of Henri "I live in Morocco now" Faivre.

The event covered the first weekend of June, and we had to cope with beautiful weather. People had come from all over Europe and once more the perennial pseudo Europhiles, The Ed and Pat Manning, also graced us with their presence.

With the popularity of the venue and the number of early attendees almost guaranteed we had a full house! The Hotel Capricorne once again proved an ideal resting place and the Lion d'Or hotel acted as an over-flow establishment. Several hardy souls elected to abuse their bodies and camped. A few mad souls even drove down through France to be able to join us. Some crazy souls even brought bicycles!

Most people arrived on the Friday, 2 June, and were greeted, well I was anyway, with copious cold beers and a bit of suspect hooch from behind the club room bar! The event got started in a very merry fashion. Our hosts had arranged a minibus transport and after draining the supplies at the Escadrille hangar club room we adjourned to our hotels to book in, etc. There were strict instructions to return to the airport hangar in good time for our evening hangar meal. This we did with alacrity.
Some with less alacrity than others as a few misguided wannabe fitness freaks decided to walk back to the airport. Guess who said, "Oh! I know the way"? Guess who got lost? Guess who took seven other reprobates with him on an eight mile hike on what should have been a two mile mission? I'm still blushing! Anyway, we did all sit down to an evening meal in the hangar. It was an evening full of meeting old friends and lots of laughs. I think we got back to the hotel around midnight (to be greeted by more party animals - the nice girl behind the reception even smuggled out more beer for us!).