We met up with a friend of ours and his young lady for a sumptuous three course lunch at Hintlesham Hall in Suffolk, and Peter being Peter decided to eschew public transport and instead helicopter down from the wilds of Yorkshire where he is sometimes based to his work premises in London. Handily this meant he could drop out of the sky a few miles from us, giving me an excuse to take a day off and for us all to meet him for lunch.
It's always great catching up - the last time we saw each other was at a villa in Portugal in February, but his suggestion that the pilot, Steve, take us up for a quick buzz of our house was an unexpected bonus, and so we found ourselves crossing the Suffolk/Essex border at 900 feet to look down on where we live.
The ride itself was fantastic. We hardly knew that we had taken off, such was the smooth ascent (though the ground rapidly moving away was something of a giveaway), and hurtling through the air, watching the cars crawl like ants along the ribbon thin roads, trying to spot familiar sights from a whole new angle was exhilarating.
I must admit I had a slight trepidation about asecnding in a metal dragonfly, but once strapped in and filled with confidence by the fact that Steve was ex-RAF and had flown a few of these things in his time, the experience was one of the better ones I've had in recent years.
The pseudo freedom of hurtling through the air with only a glass screen to protect us from the elements was unlike anything I've ever been party to. Sat in the body of an airliner you barely know you're airborne, but here, strapped into the front seat I could see everything.
All too soon the ride was over, and we engaged in our delightful lunch, but it's definitely an experience that I want to repeat.
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