We’ve just completed a trip to Norway from Yorkshire routing via the Netherlands on the outbound journey and returning across the North Sea in our Robin President G-CHIX.

We were part of a group (The Flying Farmers) who do European Tours every year. This year, the chosen destination was Norway. We met up in the Netherlands at Lelystad. There appeared to be 2 problems – firstly Mode S, secondly ELTs. For those with Mode S, it is mandatory in the Netherlands, but prohibited in the Amsterdam area (nearly half of the Netherlands). For those without, there is still confusion as to whether it’s mandatory over the North Sea, otherwise it’s simply a matter of staying below 1200’. Fixed ELTs are mandatory that will go off on impact. We had a PLB and a portable ELT so considered ourselves nearly covered, but they weren’t questioned. What use is a fixed ELT if the aircraft sinks!

The landing fee at Lelystad was about Euro 80 and fuel was Euro 2.24 per litre! A lovely airfield with plenty of activity and a good restaurant overlooking the runway, but expensive, even allowing for the poor exchange rate.  The next destination was Kjeller (Oslo). This entailed a 4.5 hour flight through 5 countries – Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. This was a beautiful flight routing Helgoland (in the North Sea), up to the tip of Denmark, across to the west coast of Sweden and then into Norway. I must say the information services offered by all these countries was superb.

Kjeller is a small military / GA airfield only 20 minutes taxi ride from the centre of Oslo. The first thing we noticed was that avgas was only just over £1 per litre, second thing we noticed was that beer was £12 per litre! Norway is a relaxing place to be. The people are extremely friendly and you sense a slower pace of life. They say that they aren’t feeling the effects of the recession, so they must earn a hell of a lot more than us to afford to eat out and drink. I would say that generally meals were twice the cost of home with a standard main course being £25.

Next stop was a farmer’s strip in the south. This belonged to Rolf, one of only three flying farmers in Norway. This was ideal use of the President – one minute on a 4.5 hour flight (with 2.5 hours in reserve) speeding along at 130 kts, next landing on a 500 metre grass strip, which is no problem to a Robin. From here we flew to the Telemark area landing at Notodden. This entailed a bit of cloud dodging as some heavy squalls were passing through. The airfield is in a fairly narrow valley entailing a sharp descent from 3000 feet to sea level and a tightish circuit in the valley. This area is famous for the raid on Telemark to try and stop the Nazis from using the heavy water plant to develop their atomic bomb. It could have been a different end to the war if they had beaten the British and Americans in their quest for supremacy and power.

Our final staging post was Stavanger on the west coast. This entailed a flight across the mountains which was amazing. Unlike the Alps where you never really loose site of civilization in the valleys, on this flight you suddenly felt very lonely as you crossed the plateau of about 4000 feet covered in snow and frozen lakes. Not a house, road or railway line was to be seen for long periods. Stavanger is a busy airport with regular commercial flights. The club members welcomed us and soon started telling us stories of their flights to Iceland and Shetland which eased my thoughts of the planned North Sea crossing. We stayed in the airport hotel which was adequate.

Before setting off back home, we had a day to fly round the fjords, landing at Stord further up the coast. The fjords really are spectacular. One we flew down was quite narrow with 3000 feet cliffs at each side. At one point we climbed out of the fjord as it was getting turbulent and had to climb to 8000 feet to fly back over the tops back to Stavanger.

I must say, I was a little nervous of the 300 nm flight from Stavanger to St Abbs, but I needn’t have worried. The Sea is far more populated with oil rigs, boats and helicopters than the Norweigan mountains and radio contact was held all the way. After Stavanger handed us over to Aberdeen Offshore, there was a short period where we were off the radar screens, but they asked us to report every 10 minutes to make sure all was well. We had to fly through an occluded front which was fairly benign, then after that it was  beautiful with clear sky. From 100 miles from Scotland, we could see the shape of the coast line marked by a bank of clouds. Before we reached St Abbs, we turned left and ran down the coast to cut the corner, so we actually coasted in near Teeside after 400 miles over water.

So from Stavanger back to Malton, North Yorkshire it was 3 hours 20 minutes of beautiful bumpless flying sat in the extreme comfort of the President letting the autopilot keep us on the exact heading and I bet we never deviated more than a few feet from our chosen 3000’ for the whole crossing.

Paul Stephens