‘Where we’re going we don’t need roads’

There was a summer Sunday not long gone by — the kind of day where the heat continues to rise and the blue of the sky is utterly cerulean — that was perfect to spend in the sky in a friend’s four-seater Cessna 172. We flew from Gloucestershire Airport to Goodwood, West Sussex, for lunch, passing over the rolling chalkland of the South Downs and the glistening specks of cars in traffic jams, to touch down within the 1948 motor-racing circuit — the Mecca of car lovers.

Post-lunch, we took off again, continuing on to the Isle of Wight, cruising over a sea so hot that the propeller rotated through air made from an evaporated haze of salt and sun. Descending on ‘England in Miniature’, we walked to the beach; I swam in the sea, my friend read his book, children splashed around and yachts sailed past. Airborne again and full of ice cream, we tacked, in late afternoon, over the Westbury White Horse in Wiltshire, Bath’s crescents glittering in their golden hour, the pastoral perfection of Ralph Allen’s Prior Park in Somerset and, thrillingly for any equestrian, swooped low over Badminton Park in Gloucestershire, the jewel in the crown of the British eventing circuit.