Well, what can I say, GUBAT, (Great Unplanned Baltic Tour), was a great success.

Having missed the 2005 AYA Annual meeting in Valdera, Italy, due to a temporary medical problem, I was determined to make my own GUST, planning on Malta or Greece as a final destination. There was no response on the Grumpy website for such a plan, but André Everaert invited me to join him, visiting Lauri Mattila, our Finish friend, who we met at the annual AYA Europe meeting in Greena (Denmark) last year, for the Jämijärvi Fly In in Finland.

Peter Romeikat intended to come, but his US flying partner, Ed Manning, wanted to go to the AYA meeting in the USA and so at the last minute he joined André in OO-GAZ. Paul Newton (Grumpy Cow) has sold his AA1 and deserted us for a fast and sexy Italian piece, but he promised to meet up with us at Jämijärvi. Jorge Trauboth also promised to be there, flying from southern Germany with his friend Peter Pfeiffer.

My very old friend John Jefferis was able to join me in G-MALC and so we set off on the adventure.

As in previous years, our objectives were:

• To have some fun flying.
• To stretch the boundaries of our aviating.
• To educate Air Traffic Controllers in as many countries as possible.
• To make any Grumpies who were not with us jealous.

So much for Unplanned tours. The only unplanned bit is deciding when we will go, where we will land and how long we stay. The latter depends on the reception we receive and the abundance of Blond Barmaids, sorry Ni if I have let the cat out of the bag. We all spent a Kings ransom and many hours getting the charts and airfield information. The trip beggars belief, (eat your heart out Ni). I will not try to describe the wonders of northern Europe, we were expecting charts with large blank spaces annotated ‘Here Be Dragons; we found great difficulty in getting all the charts I needed, and André, who had been more successful, kindly photocopied the important details for us.

The rest I will only outline as a diary, leaving out the delightful details to tantalise Ni.

From Tallinn (Estonia) to Kaunas (Lithuania)

Tuesday, 19th. Tallinn to Kaunas, Lithuania. 300 miles This was the first time that I have been issued with a boarding card to get onto my own plane. I could not resist filling it in as Gate 102, Grumpy Airlines, and allocating myself a non-smoking seat, 01 L. Mark Jefferies of YAK UK, had recommended me to stopover in Kaunas as a pleasant town with an inexpensive airport. That must have been a long time ago. Juozas Dalinskis from LITCARGUS Handling Company seems to think that anybody flying their own aeroplane must be a millionaire and charged landing, parking and handling fees accordingly. Fuel was 2.2 Euros a litre, that is almost $9 per US gallon. So you have been warned General Aviation, for your information the same company LITCARGUS is also operating in Vilnius. The town will eventually be lovely, once they tidy it up for the tourist trade. We can at least say that we saw it before it became spoilt and prices rise. We had intended to stay two days but decided to move on.

From Kaunas (Lithuania) to Gdansk (Poland)

Wednesday, 20th. Kaunas to Gdansk, Poland. 227 miles. A Grumman AA1 owner, Rafal Bartusch, living in Gdynia had heard of our plans and suggested we visit him and he would organise everything for us, so the decision was made to go there. Today we lived up to the true Grumpy spirit. So far ATC had been so helpful and friendly that we did not have the heart to confuse them. We carefully skirted Kaliningrad (Russian airspace) and crossed the Polish border. Our route then took us through two Military areas. Our charts gave us a FIS frequency but told us it was in Polish language only.

Kaunas information however passed us on to them. Up to this point I had been having trouble receiving and André had been passing on messages. Now the reverse happened, we were up at 4000 feet and André was down at 1500. The military controller told us that their Temporary Segregated Area (TSA) was active and what was our intention. I received the message and elected to make a big southerly diversion rather than risk the very narrow corridor between their TSA and the Russian border, I did not fancy being escorted by MIGs to one of their airfields. André did not hear them and could not hear me relaying messages. In consequence he went straight through and landed well before us to a quizzing by ATC and the military. This was a performance that would make Yogi proud. The upshot was a mild slap on the wrist and a very polite ‘have a good journey’.

We arrived one day ahead of schedule and discovered that Rafal was away in Warsaw on business. Our taxi driver took us to a rather well worn Novotel but which had the advantage of being within five minutes walk of the old town. All I will say of Gdansk is that you must visit it, if you love Tallinn, you will love this beautiful town even more. Yes it was almost completely destroyed in WW2 but it has been restored to its 17th century glory. Rafal met up with us on Thursday and brought along one of the Air Traffic Controllers, Mr. Jacek Kosicki who has a second job as a town guide. We were planning to leave on Friday but the weather turned against us, with embedded Cb’s, so we met Rafal and the Guide again and were taken to see more of the town and then on to Gdansk Oliwa where we heard a superb recital on a 7800 pipe organ that can even imitate bird song.

From Gdansk (Poland) to Groningen (The Netherlands) and the next day Turweston (UK)

Saturday, 23nd. Gdansk to Hamburg and Eelde, Holland. 437 miles. It took us over two hours to clear the airport formalities. Having been sent through the domestic departure gate, we were loading our bags into the planes when we were asked to go back to have our bags x-rayed again at the international gate. We had to make a third trip for some reason that we could not make out. It became a real farce but we saw the funny side of it, even the police were smiling.

The weather forecast was not good but we set off for Hamburg where Peter wanted to get a commercial flight to Munich. He told us that the fees were very reasonable, he was wrong. Once the heavy rain had cleared we set off for Eelde, André electing to stay with us rather than continue on home. We had an enjoyable evening in the town of Groningen, even if the taxi ride did cost more than the meal. At least we were able to make a toast to a very enjoyable trip.

Sunday, 24th. Eelde to Lydd and Turweston. 360 miles

We said our goodbyes to André this morning and followed him for the first hundred miles. As Turweston has no emigration facilities we decided to land at Lydd to clear formalities. Mid channel the cloud base came right down but we got in under a 500 foot ceiling with no problems. We had to wait four hours for the front to move past us before we set off on the final leg. A few miles north we found the cloud base lifting and had an enjoyable flight. On arriving at Turweston we again found a 400 foot cloud base with a deserted airfield.

Again this was no problem. The memories that will stay with me of the tour were once again the friendliness of all the people we met, the great fun we had, the wonderful places we visited which twelve years ago were forbidden to us, and the level of service and courtesy we had from ATC. We stretched our geographic boundaries by reaching N61.50 and E026.23. Jörg who made North Cape, nine degree further north eclipsed even this. As a footnote, having covered over 2600 miles in 30 hours, without mishap, I managed to trip over and break my ankle the next day and finished up in hospital for three days. No more flying or even driving for the next six weeks.