I was having a little look at some of my travel photos recently, ones that I haven’t posted online before and I realized that I am strangely fascinated with what I can see out of the plane window. This is slightly weird because, truth be told, flying actually freaks me out a bit, but I’ve found that focusing on the view of sites and landscapes on the ground, distracts my mind, stopping me thinking about crashing down to my death in a ball of red-hot flames.
Anyway, here are a few views from the cheap (economy) seats.
Syria/Lebanon
Flying over Lebanon, out of Damascus airport, I loved the ripples and curves made by the ranges of hills and mountains in the Bekaa Valley.
Algeria
In Algeria, flying is pretty well a necessity. The country is enormous and the country’s history has left it with a legacy of, frankly, unsafe areas. There are still a few places where kidnapping is a very real possibility, making driving dangerous.
The distance from the Ghardaia region back up to Algiers is over 600km so travelling by road is a bit of a schlep. The flight is an hour and the views are spectacular. The landscape starts as golden desert, peppered with towns north of Ghardaia.
As you get further north, the landscape turns to lush green with lakes and reservoirs.
Flight from Ghardaia to Algiers, Barrage Bouroumi, Mahaizia
Libya
Flying into Tripoli, on the coastal plain were miles of neatly planted olive groves.
The olive trees look very sparsely planted but this is the only way get a good yield of fruit, as the tree roots need space around then.
Iceland
Flying out of Keflavik Airport, Iceland, I flew directly over one of the places where I’d spent much of my time on my first visit.
This is Ásbrú, a former NATO base where the festival ‘ATP Iceland’ was held in 2015. It’s all brightly coloured, crinkly-tin shed, like many of the buildings in Iceland. Simple, functional and not especially decorative.I enjoyed the festival, and I enjoyed Iceland too.
And here’s, not the Blue Lagoon spa, but a similar hot water pool.
The heated water is the outflow from the Reykjanes Power Plant nearby.
France
Flying down to Marseille, I spotted a very exciting looking quarry.
Google maps calls this the Perasso Frederic Paul quarry but I think it’s actually called the Perasso quarry of Saint-Tronc. The Perasso company quarries gravel, concrete and sand from here. http://www.perasso.fr/societe-perasso-marseille/
Germany
Flying into Frankfurt means flying over the extensive forests that surround it. I was struck by the appearance of the motorways immediately adjacent to the airport.
This is where the Bundesautobahn 5 meets Bundesstraße 43 and the Bundesautobahn 3. Not quite Spaghetti Junction, but a striking intersection nonetheless.
London
Living, as I do, in Olde London Towne, I generally fly in and out of London airports, mainly Stansted (because it’s the right side of town for me), Heathrow (because it’s on the tube) and City, (because it’s actually IN London, as opposed to being somewhere in a field in a neighbouring county).
This means that sometimes I get to fly up the Thames. This is absolutely my favourite, even though the approach to City is slightly terrifying. The first time that I was actually aware of this, and actually thought about it properly, was when I was flying back from Damascus. I happened to glance out of the window and thought, “that’s Southend Pier!”. And it was.
Since then, every chance I get, I try to spot cool ‘something-on-Thames’ things.
Here is one of the wind farms in the Thames Estuary
and nearby, the Maunsell Forts at Shivering Sands.
This is not the greatest photo because we were in a raging storm at the time, but this is a cluster of six, originally seven, ‘army’ style WW2 anti-aircraft gun emplacements, situated in the Thames Estuary. The seven individual platforms were originally connected by walkways and were arranged as a cluster of six, housing guns and the seventh housing the searchlight.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have been able to get a bit closer to the forts as The Waverley does a couple of trips each autumn.
Further into town, we fly over some very familiar sights. The Thames Barrier
City Airport
Canary Wharf, the Isle of Dogs, Greenwich and the O2
The London Eye…
…and before I know it, I’m home. 😀
moose and hobbes 