Thirty aviators, ten aircraft, one perfect Breton Sunday: the Quimper fly-out
On Sunday 16 August the Guernsey Aero Club went to France for lunch — and what a lunch it was.
Ten aircraft and thirty members and friends set out from Guernsey on a sparkling summer morning, bound for Quimper Pluguffan in the far west of Brittany. At 107 nautical miles it is a proper sea crossing, and the fleet was as varied as the club itself, with cruise speeds ranging from 110 knots to more than 160. The answer, as ever, was the classic fly-out formula: slowest away first, fastest last, and everyone arriving at Quimper within the same happy half-hour.
Quimper Pluguffan gave us a wonderfully warm welcome. A quiet, friendly airfield with its arms open to visiting groups, it handled ten arrivals and the formalities of thirty travellers with charm and efficiency — no small feat on the Sunday of the Assumption holiday weekend, the very peak of the French summer.
From the airfield a coach whisked the party twenty minutes south to Bénodet, a picture-postcard seaside town where the River Odet meets the Atlantic. And then, the main event: lunch. With no restaurant in Finistère able to seat thirty on the busiest Sunday of the year, the group split into five parties across five tables around the Vieux Port — brasseries, bistros and seafood houses, all within a few minutes of the quay. The seafood platters were the stuff of legend: spider crab, langoustines, oysters and prawns stacked high, with the Breton coast that supplied them glittering just beyond the terrace.
The afternoon was everything a seaside afternoon should be. Some strolled the marina, some took the little ferry across the estuary to Sainte-Marine, some found the beach, and a good number found the ice cream. The group photo — all smiles, sunhats and one memorably tropical shirt — says more than any trip report could.
By late afternoon the party mustered, coached back to the airfield and launched for home, touching down in Guernsey in golden evening light with time to spare before supper. Ten aircraft out, ten aircraft home, thirty very happy people.
Days like this don’t happen by accident. Our thanks go to the operations team at Quimper Pluguffan airport, who could not have been more helpful; to the French customs officers who processed thirty arrivals with good grace; to L’Été Bus & Cars for flawless coach transfers; to the restaurateurs of Bénodet who found room for us all; and to the organising team whose weeks of planning made a complicated day look effortless.
And the next one is already in the diary: Caen, on Saturday 10 October — a shorter crossing than Quimper, with a guided visit to the Mémorial de Caen, one of the great museums of the Second World War, and lunch in the Vaugueux, the city’s old restaurant quarter behind the château. The invitation is already in members’ inboxes.
The Guernsey Aero Club runs fly-outs throughout the season — France, the Channel Islands and beyond. If you’d like to be part of one, whether as a pilot or a passenger, come and say hello at the clubhouse or get in touch through this website. There’s always a seat for someone new.
