Rural Ramblings 19: In praise of small airports

10 Apr 2009

Patrick Vickery takes a wry look at small airports in his latest not so Rural Ramble.

Inverness Airport guarantees you a healthy walk if you park your car in the long stay car park. Prestwick Airport, on the other hand, doesn't (there's a bus), although it does have a large fruit mural in the departure lounge - apples, bananas, grapes, that sort of thing - so obviously both airports take the health of their passengers very seriously.

Prestwick, of course, wasn't always so fruit orientated. A couple of years ago I was waiting in the departure lounge for a flight to Bournemouth International Airport (in reality a collection of antiquated sheds) and found Prestwick to be refreshingly continental. Apart from an irritating man on his mobile phone ordering forty tonnes of Aberdeen Angus for a supermarket chain, an agricultural couple discussing the merits of sheep on the electoral roll and a poster on the wall advertising the Ceilidh Minogue band playing a Gig in Auchtermuckty, the place had a decidedly french flavour with just a hint of the Ayr sea air.

I had a coffee from the "Bar de Voyageur", an egg mayonnaise sandwich from "Delice de France" and consumed them under the watchful eye of a plaque (now replaced by a large banana) that announced I was sitting in a space designated as "Charles de Gaulle Place". I could almost smell the whiff of Gauloises, you know, from a mirage of French onion sellers on bicycles as they crooned a Charles Aznavour song.
Anyway, returning to Prestwick last year I was disappointed to discover that it had lost it's French ambience and had metamorphosed into a putrid mishmash of oranges and yellows, some neon signs, fruit murals of course, and the usual ‘shortbread and old gift shop' that you find anywhere. Disappointing.

My destination on that occasion was Dublin Airport, possibly similar in décor to Prestwick, I can't recall, but I do recall having a blether with the taxi driver. "What's that?" I asked in all innocence as we passed Dublin's towering spire on the way into the city. "The Millennium Spire," he said, "replaced Nelson's column, blew it up in '66, his head survived, under lock and key in the museum now." And that was the end of that historical conversation.

We had a good weekend in Dublin. A tour of the Guinness Tower, a wander about Trinity College where my Grand-Father studied many years ago and a pint in the ‘Hairy Lemon' to mention but a few of the highlights. Air travel is so convenient these days, is it not?

We also had a long weekend in La Rochelle last year. The airport at there doesn't have a departure lounge, you know, so there's little danger of your senses being assaulted by large fruits, you simply wait outside to be summoned for your flight, admire the view (runway and fields) and hope it doesn't rain. Undoubtedly the best departure lounge that isn't a departure lounge I've ever had the pleasure to wait in.

Here in the Highlands, of course, we are fortunate to have Inverness Airport which has a certain quaint eccentricity about it, although accessing the departure lounge can be just as rigorous as any other airport in the country. Have you noticed how every third person must remove their shoes, or is that just an observational coincidence?

Interestingly enough, having been through shoe removal, frisking, metal detection and a luggage search, most of us would be content to sit quietly and await boarding. My father, on the other hand, who visited recently and went through all the above security procedures (obviously a suspicious-looking eighty-two year old) promptly decided to head back to the main foyer to find a particular newspaper, unfazed by the possibility of going through the whole process again. Good for him. The pull of newsprint was just too strong. If we all did this there would be chaos, of course, so I suspect it doesn't happen very often. What newspaper was it? The Ross-shire Journal perhaps? I must ask him.

This article first appeared in the Ross-shire Journal and on the Rural Gateway website

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