Charlie's WorldHolidays, part 1 – Perth to England
So, after a full days work, I hastily packed up and went to the airport to catch the midnight flight, the first leg of my journey, to Hong Kong.
Sadly, Cathay Pacific’s maintenance crews in Hong Kong had forgotten to file some paperwork, so we sat for 2 hours whilst the captain sent several rockets to obtain this before we could depart. 2 hours late was not good, seeing as I only had 2 hours between flights in HK.
We had 7 1/2 hours of flying time, the frustrated captain said he knew some transfers would be tight. The rest of the sentence wasn’t necessary. It basically said he was going to put the pedal to the metal and hang the fuel cost, this wasn’t his stuff-up.
And put the hammer down he did.
We arrived only 30 mins late. Outstanding. Had 50 mins for the connecting flight to London.
On takeoff, I had my trusty LX5 in my hand and I took a load of pics as we were taking off. Contrary to the safety warnings, theres not a lot a little camera is going to do to bring down a 747, and no aircraft systems were harmed in the making of this post.
We flew out north over Hong Kong and then out over eastern China, over Mongolia and the Gobi Desert, Central Russia and the Ural Mountains before hanging a left and coming into the UK via Finland, Denmark, the northern German coast, over Holland, right over central London and into Heathrow.
I have pics to prove it 🙂 Lots of them. I hope it was worth waiting for them all to load!
Hong Kong and then mainland China from the air was amazing – its a buzz of activity, construction, shipping, new roads, industry like you’ve never seen it anywhere else. Expansion and industrialisation is the name of the game and it looks like nothing is stopping the Chinese from modernising their entire way of life. The land was criss crossed with new motorways and railways under construction and whole cities were basically factories. Astounding.
Then we headed over the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. A more barren place I could not imagine. It even made the Western Australian outback seem over populated. Rio Tinto has an operation there – it’s an amazing place – in the middle of nowhere.
At one point, over Russia somewhere, I could see the shadow of the plane’s own contrails. Not seen that before in all the years I’ve been flying!
Then we were near Amsterdam and the great EU folly that are the North Sea wind farms.
Finally, we were over England – the Essex/Suffolk coast came into view before we headed over London, past the City, Buckingham Palace, Kew Gardens and then over suburbia and into land.
Sorry about the number of photos, but normally I don’t get the chance to take any when I’m flying because its either
- dark (the flights usually are overnight)
- cloudy (its England – what do you expect)
- I’m not in a great seat for photos (too much wing, in the middle etc)
- I’m too cool to look like a tourist
Hope you enjoyed them anyway! Next up – well, we’ll see, I’ve only been here a day so far!!
Charlie's World 
looks great! photos from planes always look good (even if your the only one who thinks so) its an adventure in the making. gotta be more fun than moving house 😉
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5. You’re usually sleeping, head back, mouth open 😉
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What great pictures. The nerdy geography student in me is all agog. This noob tourist gig has an advantage 😉
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Have you thought about doing Aerial Photography Charlie? These photos are amazing. I love these. And I dislike when your flight is late and you have to run through the airport just to catch the connecting flight.
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I love the last photo. Kew Gardens, wonderful, I spent many a childhood summers day at Kew Gardens.
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