Celtic Manor

Recently I travelled down to Newport in South Wales, just north of Cardiff for a series of business meetings which I combined with a weekend away. I had booked in to the Celtic Manor Resort which is a magnificent hotel and leisure complex boasting three championship golf courses including one, the 2010, built specifically to host  the 2010 Ryder Cup. Perfect for the enthusiastic golfer – except I’m not an enthusiastic golfer. It does however have …………a helipad. Well sort of, it’s more like an area where they let you land a helicopter, but it will do. And any place that is heli friendly deserves my custom.

I’ve been to Celtic Manor before; in 2008 I travelled there in G-LADZ and stayed overnight when I went to watch my all time favourite rock group, The Police, perform at the millennium stadium. Awesome. I knew from my previous visit how good the facilities are and so when it came to booking somewhere for a nice weekend away, it was an easy choice. The journey down was straightforward taking a little over 1 hour and 10 minutes. I flew straight down the Manchester LLR, through Shawbury and straight into the hotel. As Orlov would say, Simples. The team at the hotel are very accommodating when you commute in by chopper and give you VIP attention. We were collected in a BMW X5 and ushered to a VIP check-in area. All very posh, slightly un-necessary, but hey I’m not complaining. If you are residing in the hotel, use of the helipad is free, but non-residents are charged £150. This is very, very steep however I’m not even certain they would ever know if you’d been in an out. No-one seems to bother and I reckon I could have flown in without being a resident and gotten away with it.

Cardiff Heliport (EGFC)

Cardiff Heliport

I realised that I was likely to require some fuel if I wanted to have a fly around the area and also return to Manchester without stopping somewhere en-route on Sunday when I was scheduled to return home. I thought that it might, therefore, be a good idea to check out Cardiff heliport. The heliport, also known as Tremorfa, is situated 9NM south of Newport and 9 NM north of Cardiff Airport on the bank of Bristol Channel. It is the home of Veritair who specialise in all types of helicopter operations including filming, load lifting and passenger charter. They have a  FATO orientated 20/02 which is to the east of their terminal and also a fuel storage area with JET-A1 on tap. I thought it wise to PPR first and was told to make my way in at my own convenience. On arrival I was met with the offer of a nice cup of Tea which I would usually have accepted had it not been for the fact I’d only travelled 4 minutes from my departure point! Within 5 minutes I hd been re-fuelled and was on my way again, returning back to the hotel for my first scheduled meeting.

Historic Attractions

Historic Attractions

As Wales has a plethora of historic attractions it seemed a good idea to go and take a look at some of them. The map on the left shows how many there actually are and I decided to go and take a look at a few, from the air of course. In terms of navigation I could see that a few would be easy to identify from a small map I had found from reception and so we set off to find them.

Millennium Stadium

I started off with the Millennium Stadium (hardly historic, I know) which is in central Cardiff and easy enough to identify from the air. Regrettably the roof was closed but the view was good enough. From there we flew NNE towards Castell Coch which is a late 19th century castle built into the hillside and looks like the typical fairy tale castle.

Castell Coch

Raglan Castle

Moving slightly north we flew around Caerphilly Castle, built in the late 13th Century, which is situated slap bang in the centre of the town and is surrounded by a moat. It’s an impressive looking structure and I would have liked to have landed there and taken a closer look. Our last port of call was Raglan Castle a 15th Century structure about 10 miles North East of Newport and was another site I would like to have visited in more detail.

In hindsight, it might have been worth thinking about the prospect of landing at the sites by telephoning each one of them and asking for permission to land as there was certainly no shortage of space. I’ll remember for this for next time and see if it’s a possibility!