This is the way to do it. Our luggage is pulled to the plane by a small tractor. Security guards make friendly small talk while they sift through our bags. In the air the pilot calls out landmarks as we race seagulls and clouds over the Sound of Barra. When we land at Glasgow a woman comes out to sweep sand off the cabin floor. If you have to fly at all this is how it should be done.
We have just flown to and from Barra, the best flight in the world, well the best in Britain anyway. We landed and took off from the white cockle shell beach that has been used as a runway since 1936. The main disadvantage, according to the security guard, is the weather. He always adds another week to his holiday to cover the possibility of cancelled flights on those days when wind and rain alter the BA schedules. Sometimes, he says, he could get to Australia in the time it takes to get from Barra to visit his family in England. But maybe we should stop trying to rush everywhere?
What I like best about the hour flight across to the Outer Hebrides is that it rekindles the sense of adventure deadened by those long trails through airport shopping malls.
The only other time I enjoyed sitting in a plane so much was my first flight ever, as luck had it courtesy of the RAF from Brize Norton to Washington, back in the good old days of the Watergate scandal. I can’t even really remember why I got that perk, except that the RAF must have felt the need of a little soft publicity. Since I had never flown before I didn’t know that we were taking off at a speed not possible over commercial airports, or that it was luxury to have leg room on a transatlantic flight, still less get the chance to stand in the cockpit as we flew home through the Northern Lights.
The plane to Barra is much smaller and slower but just as exciting, partly because you can see through to the cockpit, and partly because the roar of the engines vibrates through the seats and into every bone in your body creating a physical sensation that reminds you what a thrill it is to take to the sky. And how unnatural. Flight is an adventure, an incredible human achievement of skill and ingenuity. The Wright brothers must have felt like this. Ain’t it a shame that modern travel and our current obsession with security has destroyed the excitement of travel? At best it is mind-numbingly tedious to fly, and now we are all treated like suspected terrorists.
Perhaps the only bad thing about flying to Barra is that you have to clear security in Glasgow – especially in the week after the attempt at ramming a fourwheeled drive through the entrance. The place still reeks of fire. It strikes me that airport security is always going to be lagging behind the latest methods of mass murder. Bombs made out of shampoo and mascara? Darling, that’s so 2006! Exploding shoes (they went out – but not off – in 2005, or was it 2004?). Never mind, get those shoes off and stick them under the scanner.
My aggravation melts long before we catch sight of Loch Lomond far up to the right hand side. On a good day (and this is good enough) the pilot takes the scenic route and when he is not shouting over his shoulder you can pick out landmarks and technical info with the help of the printed sheet of A4 which he decided to produce because so many people ask questions about the de Havilland Twin Otter: a plane designed to land on sand even when there is water on the beach.
On the way back to Glasgow four days later a friendly man sitting in front of me says he always flies from Barra although Benbecula airport is nearer his home because he likes the Barra flight so much better. He likes the old plane and he likes the way business men in suits become small boys when they are about to land on the beach. But he fears that one day some suits might get their way to cut costs by building a tarmac landing strip that can take bigger planes in all weathers. I do hope they don’t, that would be a real act of vandalism.
I’m lying on the beach trying to photograph the plane with my
mobile phone but it’s like trying to catch hold of a flying bird through binoculars: I always seem to be focusing on the wrong bit of sky. Just as well Ray has better luck.
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