UK trip

Great news. I was going to have a quick nap this afternoon, but instead, I started planning a UK trip later this month.

The not so good bit? It’s not my UK trip.

Mrs 6000 is heading overseas to Türkiye (yes, Türkiye) for work purposes and to get that close to Blighty from our little outpost down in the bottom corner of Africa and not get over there for a few days seemed genuinely silly.

But finding train tickets and planning family visits does at least mean I could stay awake and live vicariously through her, this afternoon.

And save the insane jealousy for when her flight takes off in a couple of weeks time.

OK, so what follows is…

OK, so what follows is… well, for the next few weeks at least… is a combination of pre-written posts and juicy fresh content.

Pre-written posts because I want to have a break without having to be concerned about needing to blog every day, and there’s no way I can guarantee a decent (or indeed any) internet connection wherever we may be. But I recognise that there’s a demand for blog posts on here and I want to keep that record of a post every day going. Because I’m a bit obsessive like that.

Deal with it.

Also, I’m trying an experiment whereby I publish a post at the same time each day: 0800 CAT in this particular case (like this one, see?). Apparently, this is the best way to blog [citation required], although I tend to just post stuff once it’s written. And usually it’s not written by 0800 CAT. However, when you’re writing stuff in advance, it’s always written by 0800 CAT. So I’m giving it a go.

Oh, and juicy fresh content because I enjoy blogging, because my most important reader is me and because there will inevitably be things I will want to share while we’re away. If interest, internet and inclination ever meet (and I’m sure that they will), I’ll be popping thoughts, photos, opinions and whatever else on here.

Keep up with updates by following me on twitter or Facebook.

Weirdly (for us at least), we’re only flying out later this evening, so we’ve got a spare day to get all those last minute jobs to get done. Hair will be cut, the beagle will be bathed, the housesitters will get their final instructions, decisions on which bottles of brandy will be packed will be made (spoiler: it’s most of them).

I am trembling with mounting anticipation.

Back down to earth

Even as I begin this blog post, I have no idea what it will be about. How exciting is that?
“What a rebel! What a firebrand! How does he do it?” I hear the audience marvel.

I do know what it won’t be about though: flight. It suddenly struck me that my last three posts had all involved flight, and that I was inadvertently drifting higher and higher: 120m with my Mavic, 40,000ft on that Dreamliner and then about 408km for the International Space Station. This wasn’t at all intentional, it just happened that way.

Anyway, it could be that this post actually ends up being about not knowing what it is going to be about. I’ve been sidetracked so many times since I began writing it (picking fantasy football side, answering emails, doing lab work), that I’m now running out of time to complete it before I have other places to be.

Quota photo?

Quota photo.

How about another one of those Brittany lighthouses?

This one is La Vieille – the Old Lady – off the Pointe du Raz, and forms part of a chain of lighthouses guiding ships safely around the end of Brittany:

There you go. Not a wing, rocket or rotor blade in sight.

Homeward

In which I find myself on a teeny-tiny plane heading back to Cape Town. This is no A380.
It’s actually an Express Jet CRJ200.

And that’s twice as good as a CRJ100. So it’s not all bad news.

Tomorrow’s post will bring photos. As will the following thirty-seven posts, because I took loads and loads.

Right. Now let’s see if this thing can actually fly…

UTA772 Memorial on Google Maps

Caught sight of this one while getting the car washed after the dirt roads of Agulhas had had their wicked way with it.

Here’s the background:

On Tuesday, 19 September 1989 the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 aircraft registered N54629 took off from N’Djamena International Airport at 13:13. 46 minutes later, at its cruising altitude of 10,700 metres (35,100 ft), a bomb explosion caused UTA Flight 772 to break up over the Sahara Desert near the towns of Bilma and Ténéré in Niger. All 155 passengers and 15 crew members died.

That’s less than a year after the Lockerbie bombing, but I don’t even recall hearing about this. I’m looking at you, Western-centric Media.

Here’s the wikimapia link, so that you can go and see the actual memorial, which is fairly amazing in itself, but what makes it even more incredible is the story behind the memorial:

The memorial was built mostly by hand and uses dark stones to create a 200-foot diameter circle. The Ténéré region is one of the most inaccessible places on the planet. The stones were trucked to the site from over 70 kilometers away.

The amazing thing is that because the location is so remote, even 18 years after the crash, much of the wreckage was still to be found at the crash site. Part of the starboard wing makes up the monolith at the north tip of the memorial.

34-iQoqN4P       32-rpmrm9k
An extraordinary tribute to those who died, but one which only a handful of people will ever actually see.