mayday
May-30-2014, 15:09
A few months ago I was on a commercial flight from the UK to Turkey. We took off from South Wales at something like 7 in the morning and flew east following the line of the M4 motorway towards London. It was a beautiful early winter morning with no cloud and the visibility was sharp and crystal clear. I know that our eventual flying altitude was 39000 feet but what it was as we flew just south of London I don't know. I was sitting on the starboard side of the aircraft just in front of the wing and had a clear view of the outside. I was flicking idly through one of those magazines they give you when I happened to look up and glance out of the window. As a bit of a history buff and particularly airwarfare what I saw made me gasp. There, like some historical presentation was laid out almost the whole Battle of Britain 'battlefield'. I could see the whole Kent coast from Dungeness in the south to the North Foreland in the north and there on the horizon but still unbelievably close was the coast of France. Looking down at the neat green fields and then out to the sand beaches and the grey shimmering sea I must admit I found it all very moving. An experience I'll never forget.