Beware, low fliers

St Roland
Yesterday's weather: More lovely sun, 25 degrees.

One of the things that has been missing this summer, probably due to the awful and unpredictable weather is the French airforce doing their low flying practice overhead. They are usually around on a clear day (of which there have been all too few this summer). They come out to play in the late morning or during the afternoon. You usually can't hear them coming until they are immediately overhead, unless they are more than three kilometres to the south or north of us. Now that we have had a spell of lovely clear and sunny weather they have come out to play again.

The other day we happened to be on the patio when two passed over just to the south, followed by another a minute later who was immediately overhead. We are always surprised that the cats don't run and hide when this happens as we once had a cat who would hide from microlights and hot air balloons which passed along the Tillingbourne Valley on a regular basis.

The pilot who was lagging behind the other two obviously had a bit of a sense of humour and must have spotted us watching him as he sneaked up on us a minute or so later coming even lower and directly overhead, taking us by surprise again. We had this happen once before when staying at a friends house not 30 kilometres from here. There was a pair of jets who passed low over the house when we were outside and quite exposed, we jumped out of our skins. They banked around and came back. Twice. Catching us completely unawares each time as we hadn't heard their approach. It made us wonder if they were using us as a sort of unarmed target practice.

I hate the idea of combat, wars and the damage these aircraft and their weapons can inflict, but I admit that I find them totally impressive and have to go and look whenever we hear them pass. The nerves of steel these pilots must have to fly so low and so fast is just incredible. Stress-free work? Not a bit of it.