Day 16

May 17th, 2008
Leg 19: Valencia (LEVC) – Reus (LERS)
PIC: Etienne
Flying time: 1h30
Landing fee: EUR 14 (incl. parking fee of around EUR 1.50/day in Spain)

Today we decided to leave Valencia in order to reach Gerona. The Metar’s and TAF’s looked good, though there was some chance that it would rain today (temporarily during the whole day).
The sky looked better today than 2 days ago when we also tried to leave Valencia. Using Servisair to being brought to our plane set us back another EUR 50,= (incl. the ride to the terminal 2 days ago after returning to the field). Not really cheap for a 5 minute ride, but less expensive than others who love to charge you for “full handling”.

At the security the Guardia Civil wanted to see our flight plan (plan de vol). Well, if you use the flight information office in Amsterdam by phone, you don’t have that :), so we had to ask the local FIO to print our flightplan and show it to him in order to let us pass. (he didn't even know how to read it!)


Finally after take off at 10:04am from runway 30 we headed northwest towards reporting point N. However, we could only fly at an altitude of 1000ft due to poor visibility. At the coastline visibility first got a little worse, though we could still see just enough. After a couple of minutes the weather got a bit better and we continued to fly over the sea with the coastline within our vision while being at 1500ft.


But after more than an hour of flying, we ran into rain and our plan to fly over the sea to pass Barcelona wasn’t really appealing anymore. So we headed back for the coastline and decided to divert to Reus, just south of Barcelona. At Barcelona, VFR traffic is not allowed and there are strict rules how to pass. Our sea route was in our view a no go today and the land route was a big doubt since it is through a valley around the city and the visibility was pretty poor.


After landing in the rain on Reus we discussed what to do with a very enthousiastic guy at the Meteo’s office. Unfortunately he had no positive news (the rain would continue and even tomorrow too). We made new plans in the cantine, and looked at new forecasts a couple of hours later. To our disappointment, we saw that Perpignan (just north of Gerona) was expecting thunderstorms and winds gusting to 35kts (variable direction). We spoke to some English blokes that just arrived from France to Reus and they also told us it was pretty bad around Barcelona and even in Carcassone (France). This all meant we stayed in Reus, also known as Salou :) for the night.