This day I am flying from City Airport - I love this airport as it’s so easy to get through, I only need to check in 30 minutes before the flight is due! It is late July, when the weather conditions can be variable - I have travelled on a really hot July day, and the ground haze made any view impossible to see. But the last couple of days have been cool and cloudy, and today is bright - so I have hopes of a pleasant flight.

We take off at around the time we are expecting, taking off to the west and making a steep right turn, which brings us out over East London, and often over my very house! This is a game I play - trying to work out my house from the hundreds below - and I sometimes manage it if I work out the right alignment of train tracks and roads - today, however, we take a slightly more southerly route, but the views are still amazing. With the East End spread out below you, you get the sense of how much water and greenery there is down there - at ground level all you are aware of is the buildings.

Our flight path takes us out over the centre of England, rolling fields and towns dotted here and there - and the conditions are excellent - way down there are a few fluffy white bits of cloud, and the overall impression is of a patchwork of different colours - mostly greens, but with some yellow and browns. And I remember way back to geography classes in school, about how rivers wind and twist - and look! there is one just doing that!!!! Perspective is all, I guess, from up here it suddenly makes sense when you can see a whole river winding down a valley. But one odd perspective thing from here, is that it is not at all clear what is a valley and what a hill - the whole area looks totally flat, and it is only the rivers that show where the heights are.

We skirt Birmingham, and the man-made nature of the land becomes more evident. Of course, logically, the patchwork of fields is artificial too - but it just seems more natural:) around Birmingham we see roads and buildings - but, not as big a sprawl as you see in London. North from there, and off to the left is Morecambe Bay - it’s low tide and we see the estuary mud flats laid out - and again I’m impressed at the power of rivers. Further north still, and we cross the lake district and the borders, and for the first time you can tell that some of these features down there are hills - and then we are going over almost mountains - tree covered to some extent, and then higher peaks that appear totally bare from up here. It’s at this point that we are told we are 10 minutes out of Edinburgh Airport, and the ground below starts to get gentle again and farms appear once more.

Our approach into Edinburgh takes us to the south of the City - and it is easy to spot Arthurs seat - that outcrop of rock left from an ancient volcano - but much less easy to spot the castle, which dominate the skyline when you are on the ground. In fact, it is only because I can work out from the street layout where it is, that I can spot it at all!

Then we fly way out over the Firth of Forth - another big estuary with islands and lots of shipping. Now as we get lower, it’s easy to see the waves on the water, and even the sand banks under the water's surface. Turning inland we follow a stream, complete with waterfalls and bubbling rapids, till at last we come in site of the airport, with it’s new pepper-pot of a control tower showing that this is a busy and prosperous place.

And so from the City of London, to the City of Edinburgh in a little over an hour - and we see much of the varied countryside that makes up our United Kingdom - and it makes you realise that this is indeed an island, with many rivers and lots of estuaries - a water borne realm indeed:)