A Greek Odyssey Part 2

Flying the C182 to Greece using a hard-won Instrument Rating wasn’t quite trouble-free. It’s now time to contemplate the return trip

- Stephen Walker

Two weeks into our Greek Odyssey and 1,800 miles from my home base at Denham, I had my first accident. Readers may remember from Part One that I’d flown my group owned Cessna 182, G-MICI, with my flying partner Sally, across ten countries and a decent chunk of the Mediterranean, all the way from the UK to Sitia on the eastern edge of Crete. It had taken us over a week to get there in what was turning out to be by far the most challenging and exciting aerial tour of my piloting life. Since then, we’d spent a few days feasting on fish and feta, swimming in azure seas, marvelling at how far we’d travelled in our little flying machine, and watching the weather with a wary eye. Now it was time to start home. And that’s when it happened.

We’d arrived at Sitia airport at midday intending to fly 150 miles west to the tiny Ionian island of Kythira, nestling at the southern tip of the Peloponnese. The plan was to grasp a perfect opportunity and turn this into a low-and-slow VFR sightseeing expedition over and around a number of stunning Aegean islands. Given the tortuous complexities of most airport opening times in this part of the world−not to mention the almost total absence of avgas and sometimes sky-high fees− we’d decided not to land at any of those islands along the way.

Actually, let me rephrase that and say that we had originally thought of landing at one of them, Naxos, but the operator rather put me off by suggesting that if I didn’t stump up the demanded cash on arrival he could always take my aeroplane. That took Naxos off the list. Kythira, on the other hand, was cheap, cheerful and−we had been told−utterly unspoiled. So it was Kythira or bust.