We were very kindly hangared overnight with Gulf Air, and we returned this morning to find our little baby microlight totally dwarfed by a huge, huge Boeing 767 over it, with us nestling under a wing, not like a mother hen and chick, but more like a mother hen with a flea!

I felt hot and sweaty, even putting on reduced warm clothing under my flying
suit- just two fleeces and no balaclava, but we soon felt a bit cool once we were up at 3,000 feet over the Gulf.

Actually, we were very grateful to get away so smoothly, and once again felt a bit dwarfed by all the huge commercial airliners taxiing out behind us, and felt a bit less threatened once airbourne and out of the circuit!

The air was a lot less turbulent over the 270 miles of open Gulf most of the way, and I enjoyed being able to keep a more accurate track as a result, listening to a recipe of angle of bank and compass only.

After about 3 hours non-stop listening to this digital data being spoken to me, I found my brain feeling a bit mushy, and on a couple of occasions I could hear the information perfectly, but could not translate it into meaning, and meandered off course a couple of times- just a matter of a few seconds loss of concentration that results in me having to turn some 60 or more degrees to get back on track.

I am beginning to realise how tiring it is on brain power, having only audio numbers to constantly digest and interpret.

We flew over lots of oil derricks, either stationary in the Gulf or being towed to new locations by boat.

Richard also described the gigantic size of a few super-tankers we flew
over- giants of the sea, even at 3,000 feet!

Richard took over as we approached the now famous Dubai skyline with a 20 MPH tail wind, flying just off the coast with all the high sky-scraping hotels and buildings just a little way off our left wing, including the soon to be highest building in the world, as well as passing over the artificial islands that have been built- one of them replicating in miniature the continents of the world.

I think we made history today,  becoming the smallest aircraft to have landed at the huge international airport, according to one of the aviation people who has been around for many years.

Jet Aviation, the same great people who gave us hangar accommodation at Biggen Hill for several days, again came up trumps, offering us unlimited use of their facilities here as well (huge thanks to Michael at Biggen Hill and Marcus here!)

We found that our Project Manager Jon Cook had once again done a great job sorting out our hangar space, and Sophie back at the Standard Chartered Bank came up trumps with a great hotel near the airport- thank you both so much!

I did a long telephone interview for a British magazine soon after arriving at the hotel followed immediately by two more interviews in the lobby with both the UAE's biggest newspaper and one of the region's most popular magazines.

I then discovered we had lost another hour flying into Dubai, so find myself trying to sort out this blog at 0145 hours, and looking forward to my bed!

Tomorrow it is off to Oman, where we will have our first break from flying daily the next day- my 13th in a row today, with the pace very exciting but also tiring

Huge thanks to all who have sent us e mails in the last few days- I will try to catch up with them all in Oman!

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