My wife Maureen and I were on route to Mollis in Switzerland in my  Cessna 150 G-ARFI ,we were travelling with Malcolm and his wife Maureen in their PA28 G-AVSD.

We had planned to take two days to reach Mollis and had stopped overnight in Nancy in Northern France. Having tied down and walked to the terminal building we were told that the town was pretty full because of a local derby football match, eventually we managed to find accommodation in a Formula One hotel, did I say hotel? well it was a fully automated hole in the wall, a sort of pod very small, very basic but far better than sleeping out in the open. We showered and changed and caught a Taxi to the centre. A very large square sporting a host of cafe’s, and restaurants, eventually we found a restaurant with a spare table, it turned out to be a Russian restaurant oh well you try anything when on holiday, we were pleasantly surprised.

Next day we coaxed what weather we could out of the MINITEL filed our flight plans for Grenchen home of the famous Breitling watch. Malcolm went ahead as both aircraft had very different cruise speeds 120kts to 90 kts (just)

Maureen and I chatted as we made our way identifying a town and a village here and there, as we progressed the cloud ceiling started to look a lot closer as we headed for the hills but we were still able to identify Remiromant a large town in the foot hills of the Vosges mountains.  Just a minute that river is to the north of that town not the south and that dual carriageway has suddenly ended, a look at the Compass and the D.I.  SH@*T . where are we the clouds seemed to ever descend upon us and the valley left no room to do a 180 even in a Cessna 150, by now disappearing beneath us as we disappeared into the cotton wool. Keep it slow, it must be better to crash slowly than fast, a quick look at the VSI, amazing we are climbing at 180 ft per minute, a quick calculation in the head revealed we must be over weight ( this turned out to be an understatement )  the engine coughed Bug%&r I thought, I know Carb heat, poor old GARFI loved her carb heat about every 15 minutes or so, another cough a quick look at the VSI  80 ft a minute, a quick look at Maureen still in tears very quite! I search for my chart, how high are the hills around here anyway I say to myself 4108’  Sh#t I push the Carb heat in and wait for the acceleration in climb, it was as if the gauges were frozen 18 minutes later and we are at 4500’ I breathe a sigh of relief, but we are still in cloud and we have the Swiss Jura mountain range ahead 5272’ the south and 4580’ to the North, a full 35 minutes since we last saw terrain and we broke out on top at 7500’ Phew!