I mentioned this to some of my friends who like heavy metal type music and they had heard of this event, although it’s not really within the realms of my musical knowledge which becomes uncertain when it gets loud.
Located around 30 kilometres south-east of Nantes is Clisson, home of Hellfest, France’s largest extreme music festival and one of the biggest metal events in Europe. Founded in 2006, it now attracts more than 280,000 visitors across four days, with stages devoted to metal, hard rock, punk and hardcore music. For most of the year Clisson is an attractive little town of vineyards, medieval buildings and riverside scenery, before June arrives and it is temporarily occupied by several hundred thousand people wearing black T-shirts and discussing which form of screaming is the most musically sophisticated.
I’m sure it’s very lovely and I had a look at the food vendors at this year’s festival and they seemed quite appealing. At least that’s something that I would have properly understood.
The gate was called which meant it was time to traipse off to the furthest part of the airport which is where all my Ryanair flights seem to depart from. I suppose that the airport charges them a cheaper rate per gate for flights that depart from the very boundary of the terminal.
Ryanair aircraft everywhere, waiting patiently to transport people across Europe for less than the cost of buying lunch in the airport.
Gate 34, the same gate as I boarded from a couple of weeks ago and I’m not sure it’s possible to get a gate further away from the main terminal with a shuttle bus and an overnight expedition. Boarding was a little muddled, they didn’t put the “boarding” line on the screen and a confused gate agent came over to ask why people weren’t boarding. She said that she had been shouting, but as she was around 20 metres away, it wasn’t entirely a surprise that no-one heard her. A passenger then had an argument with her about the whole arrangement, just to add a little drama to proceedings.
We were then held up as another passenger was trying to take a backpack that looked like she had somehow fitted a hippo into it. The gate staff, who were letting some quite large bags go through, could hardly turn a blind eye to that and so that was another £60 for the airline in fees.
The walk to the aircraft, during which there was ample opportunity to reflect on whether Nantes was actually closer than the departure gate.
I’d never noticed this on the side of an aircraft before and Wikipedia tells me that “they measure undisturbed ambient atmospheric pressure. It is a vital component of the pitot-static system, supplying static air pressure data to the altimeter, vertical speed indicator (VSI), and airspeed indicator”.
I asked AI to explain this to me as though I were an idiot, which is a setting I have already spent considerable time training it to use. It replied that they were basically measuring altitude, so that was another aviation mystery comprehensively resolved without the inconvenience of obtaining a pilot’s licence.
As always, I like these steps that fold into the aircraft before departure. The aircraft is EI-ESS and I looked at how many flights that completed today and it’s eight, which shows considerable efficiency. By comparison, I had managed to get myself from Luton Airport’s waiting area to Gate 34 and already felt that I had achieved enough.
As I hadn’t had any sleep I was getting a little tired by this point and was slightly pre-annoyed that the seating Gods had given me a middle seat.
Fortunately, there was no-one in the window seat and so I was able to move across. The flight was around 30% empty and so it seems the only reason I had been allocated a middle seat was to encourage me to pay to move to a window or aisle. In fairness to Wizz Air, they don’t seem to try that tactic on me, which is sensible as it doesn’t work on me at least.
I’m sure that there was a reason that I took this photo, although I can’t now remember what it was. So, here are some fields to look at. They appear to be functioning correctly in that role.
And safely landed on time into a very hot Nantes. The fare was more than I’d usually pay at £15, but the whole arrangement was efficient, the crew members were friendly, the aircraft was clean and everything went as I had expected. A smooth flight gives me less material for this blog, but it is probably best for all concerned and I remain entirely satisfied with Ryanair.
