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The Grumpy Gang

The Grumman Aircraft Pilots Association European Branch

Having recouped our waning energies we decided to move on - we had a date with Dave Whiteley and his wife Karen in their new chateau near Peylaurens (about 30nm east of Toulouse) - Despite all warnings about the bad behaviour of the GUST-RACers David continued to insist on us visiting him, to christen his garden with our tents, to drench ourselves in his wine cellar and drink from his swimming pool (or is that supposed to be the other way round?)

Our flight from Propriano took us up the west side of Corsica (more splendid scenery)
Some called in at Calvi on the northern end of the island, others went direct to Castres (our designated field for meeting up with the deranged David W.)

The majority went to Cannes on the French mainland - All 'beautiful people', big yachts, film stars and Gulfstream G III's. A very nice place was Cannes. Very helpful airfield people, despite the N31RB tribe trying to taxi off without paying for their fuel!! (Are you, dear reader, beginning to get any sense of a pattern here?).
One note of alarm was raised subsequent to our visit to Cannes. An alert Grumman Gang member reported evidence of the dreaded 'Orange Blobs' at Cannes. He described how the 'blobs' appeared on his aircraft after the Cannes airfield had been sprayed with some chemical or other! Being ever vigilant and astute to the political situation in France, we Grumpies considered that the threat of Vietcong infiltration would possibly justify the use of Agent Orange to defoliate the grassy bits of the airport and congratulate the invisible Air America boys for their excellent disguises - we didn't spot one of them (nor their aircraft!) - although the party of school girls in the terminal building did look decidedly suspicious!

From Cannes the route taken was a low level sortie along recommended VFR route (not above 600ft AGL) over the beachfront of St Tropez, (waved my hankie at the topless models!) then along south of Marseilles, past the industrial petrochemical areas of Lavera and Port du Bouc (It's where I used to park my Exxon tanker! - Ahoy! Avast your cordwangles me hearties, the memories, they be flooding back!).

Further westwards we flew, over the saltpans of the Camargue region with their flamingos and pink man-made lagoons, then a climb up over Montpellier city and over the hills to Castres with magnificence views of the towering Pyranee Mountains way off to the southwest and then into the tender mercies of David and Karen. A splendid flight, full of interest and constantly changing scenery. I'd recommend it to anyone provided they had done some planning (e.g.: what radio frequencies to expect and, very importantly, the location of all the obligatory coastal reporting points)