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It sounded a perfectly good idea at the time, but as one of my colleagues pointed out, short skirts are on display in the south of France in April, while parkas are the only sensible clothes in the Baltic region until June. Why on earth did we decide on a tour of Denmark, Sweden and Poland in April? I still have no answer.Spring was just starting in southern England when I set out from Popham, UK (EGHP) on 30th March, destination North Weald where the Royal Aero Club, Record Racing and Rallying Association was holding an air racing school over 2 days. The weather was very bumpy, 40kts westerly, and I was in and out cloud as I circumnavigated around the north of London at 2,400ft staying under Heathrow's TMA. The wind stayed over the Thursday and the Friday giving some interesting flying for new air racers! A very enjoyable Thursday night was spent with air racing friends at a hostelry in Old Harlow.

The idea was for 3 Grummans from the UK and Belgium to meet up in Kortrijk, Belgium, on the night of Friday, 31st March. Brian and Roger were flying Brian's Traveler from Turweston and Nigel, The Grumpy Gang leader and American Yankee Association (AYA) European Director (gosh, doesn't he sound important!) was flying his AA1 from Bournemouth. Nigel was leaving his AA1 at Kortrijk Wevelgem (EBKT), Belgium and flying with André in his Tiger. I guess Nigel didn't want to wear his 'plane out! A 4th Grumman, a Tiger, based near Munich, Germany and piloted by Peter, planned to join us on the Saturday. His co-pilot was the perennial European visitor Ed, who had traveled from California for the tour and certainly gets the award for being the most traveled Grumpy!

I was flying my Tiger with Yogi as my co-pilot. Since Yogi lives to the north of Frankfurt, we had agreed I would pick him up in Bonn, so, after the air race school, I set off IFR for Bonn (Hangelar) (EDKB) airport. The stiff westerly was still blowing so I made the 283nm in a record time of 1.9hrs. Thunderstorms were rolling around, but I could see where they all were from my allocated FL80. Bonn Hangelar lies just to the south of Köln Bonn and they offered me a let down on their ILS, but conditions were VFR, so I declined. This was the last of the easy flights of the tour.