Travelling out

Having had all the months of training and a chance to get a holiday and several farewells in, I was finally on the move. Mick kindly gave me a lift to Brize Norton and, after giving the RAF the benefit of his wisdom on airport layout and security arrangements, dropped me and my bags off at the terminal. Any worries about being late were quickly quashed as we sat around for a few hours before getting a coach to the airfield we were actually flying from. We were loaded onto an unmarked white aeroplane, all very strange. I briefly wondered if we were the aerial equivalent of White Van Man, screeching up behind other aircraft, flashing headlights and honking horn to get them out of the way. In the end it was a fairly unremarkable flight, consisting of two 9 hour stints, with a break at Ascension in the middle. We whiled away the hours wondering what all the loose wiring in the cabin was for, and how a dead spider had managed to get between the two panes of glass in the window. On landing at Mount Pleasant Airport at the Falklands we were accompanied down by two Tornadoes, looking impressive as they appeared first on one wing tip, then the other. Then it was onto a coach for the drive to Stanley to find our accommodation.