Flying from home

VIDEO: IT’S after midday on a lazy Sunday in the hilly little village of Cloonmaghaura near Williamstown, when Michael Whyte and his wife Margaret suddenly decide it would be nice to have lunch on the Aran Islands. So they just step into their vehicle in the shed out in the back yard and 40 minutes later they arrive for lunch in Inishmore.
It might sound impossible, but it’s not for the Whytes, as they just take off in their two-seater aircraft for the Aran Island from the grass runway on a little hillside beside their home.
“It is nice to be able to make a trip like that so quickly to the Aran Islands for lunch, or perhaps a longer journey to Letterkenny in Donegal or down south to Bantry,” says Margaret Whyte, who leaves all the piloting duties to her husband Michael.
“He even took former Minister for Education Mary Hanafin for a spin over Williamstown when she was here during a festival a few years ago.”
Meanwhile across the county in Castlehacket House, Philip Jones and Donagh Hawtin often fly from the runway beside their home to the Isle of Man.
“The airstrip was here at Castlehacket House long before I came here in the 1990s, since the 1930s in fact.
“But it was one of the attractions of the property for me to be able to fly from home both for recreation and for easy transport across to the Isle of Man and England,” says Philip, who added that he could fly from Belclare to the Isle of Man in about one and a half hours.

See Michael flying here now.

http://youtu.be/XR4aDsaPrBs