Flight across France

Back in France with a few more hours to build before starting the CPL, I chose to do a long nav across the country rather than flying around the area with pretty much nothing to see.
A friend to visit in Britanny, and there was my flight plan:
Castelsarrasin airfield (LFCX) -> Villeneuve sur Lot -> Bergerac -> Royan -> Oléron -> Les sables d'Olonne -> Ile de Ré (La Rochelle) -> La Tranche sur Mer -> La Baule -> Golfe du Morbihan -> Quiberon -> La Baule again for a night stop, and back in Castelsarrasin the following day.
I flew a total of 8h30, got refused as well as all the other VFR trafics in the area by the French ATC who are, seemingly, on strike, and had to fly outside all their Class Delta and Charlie airspaces.
I decided to do most of the shoreline flying at the minimum allowed altitude (500ft in France) instead, and that was a good chance to take some pics through the small window of my Cessna 150.

ATPL theoretical part completed

As we got into a great chaos due to the Islandic ash cloud over Europe, our exams results kind of got delayed and I've heard some exams had to be remarked.
We ended up having the results almost a week after that expected.
I passed all my 14 exams first time with an average of 92% and this puts an end to six month of theoretical course and revisions.

From now on, almost everything in the course is going to be practical.
I flew about 6 hours during my time in France and renewed my PPL for the second time in 4 years.

I'm flying to California in two days, I've got my FAA appointment on thursday and first flights in the States in about a week time.

Mountain Flying

Hi everyone! I'm just back in sunny England after a short trip in the French Alps, and what an amazing trip! Indeed, I flew to Geneva (Switzerland) on friday, met some friends in Lyon and we drove all the way up to l'Alpe d'Huez (a ski resort) under some heavy snowfall. We met there a bunch of young pilots brought together under the association Jeunes-Ailes (literally, "Young Wings").

A bit worried at first, the gloomy foggy sky went away whilst we were skiing and we could finally enjoy a nice truly blue sky, although the temperature dropped close to -30°C (about -20°F) during the night in the upper part of the station.

I got to fly twice, in the nice Jodel D-140 Abeille (F-GJHU), and made a short video from the footage I took in flight :



I hope you like the pictures, probably the most beautiful I ever got to take, thanks to the awesome scenery!
There's a bit of everything, hard to comment them all but to sum it up, I took most of them on l'Alpe d'Huez altiport (at about 6500 ft altitude), which has a runway with a 15.5% slope and allows the random skier walking by to enjoy a superb scenery, covered in snow for the most part of the year.
I also managed to take a picture of 4 F16 and a KC135 Stratotanker from the USAF (US Air Force) overflying us at quite a high altitude. This is what I call a superb week-end!