I was having an usually bad night with Francesca and when she woke up again at 4am and I eventually got her back to sleep I went out of the room to have a cuddle with the dogs. As I was sitting at the top of the stairs I saw out of the skylight a plane passing by and it gave me such a strange feeling.
I, of course, got very curious and wondered if there was a plane tracker like you can with the ship. I'd more or less dismissed it thinking that in this day and age with all the security that can'r be possible - how wrong was I.
The plane I think I saw was the TOM145 Orlando to Manchester. It's possible it could have been the UA110 New York to Heathrow but if the map is right I think it was the TOM145.
I noticed there was another plane coming in over us soon the AA722 Philadelphia to Dublin. I did't even know it was possible to fly to Phili from Dublin so I sat at the top of the stairs looking but couldn't see it. However, something else happened. I heard it! In the still of the night too late for the neighbours kids to be out, to early for the rest of us to be up I could hear the plane over head.
As I'm sitting here writing this I can tell you that the place I just heard was the TOM797 Cancun to Birmingham. Wouldn't that be nice. Soon after on the map the AA716 Philadelphia to Munich and the DL116 Atlantia to Stuttgart look like they had a bum fight but some traffic controller dude somewhere was all over.
I was thinking about all the people on the flights. Tired and smelly and looking forward to getting back on ground after being on the plane for 8 hours from Cancun. And when I've been sitting on flights, sometimes watching the monitor as it tracks the flights, it's never occurred to me that someone on the ground is tracking us too, looking up at the plane in the night sky.
I then remembered a recent conversation in the shop about a theory on what was actually coming out of the planes. A google search revealed (I sound like the BBC) there the "Chemtrail Conspiracy' has at times made headline news and the theory is so popular it has it's own Wikipedia page.
At 6.05 my tiredness was getting the better of my curiosity when I saw this. A plane going the other way! Like a lone ranger in a sky of airbuses this little 'Bombardier Global 6000' was a fish swimming against the tide. I quickly started coming up with my own conspiracy theories and then tracked it back to see it took of in Monaco and the description of the plane... The Global 6000 aircraft was created to answer the needs of the world’s most discerning travelers for the ultimate luxury experience with range capabilities that open more routes and possibilities
It made me feel really strange. As someone whose passion in life has been travel it felt like a reminder of a familiar world. And as I've been wrapped up in teething babies, committee issues and internet orders this week it was a wonderful reminder of the world that's out there. Belmullet is a wonderful place but it can be easy to feel cut off from the rest of the world with it's remoteness. And it's a self fulfilling, when you start to think your options are restricted I suppose it's natural that it's followed by restricted thinking. A perfect example for us is recently our travel destinations have become about locations from Knock. We talk about going to Mexico and seem to talk ourselves out of it again as an 8 hour flight sandwiched by a 4 hour car journey or worse doesn't have the same appeal. Living near London afforded us a level of global freedom we didn't appreciate at the time. However, tonight has been a good reminder that everything is still possible, we just have to work a little harder at it. So the next time I'm wondering where to go I'll look at the flights going over Belmullet and figure out how to get on it....Tahiti here we come.