[TopCat]

Imagine an airfield at the seaside, with wonderful views in every direction.

Imagine an airfield without even an AGCS (at the weekend, and some but not all weekdays), with quite a bit going on, but nevertheless very quiet; where you get to choose which of the three enormous runways to land on. None shorter than 1200m, all in excellent condition.

With AvGas available, self-serve with pay-at-pump.

With a fairly basic but friendly and quite decent cafe (paninis, bacon sandwiches kind of thing), run by a keen pilot, whose dad will offer to drive you half way to the beach.

Llanbedr is that airfield. We went yesterday, and had a glorious flight there and back in perfect weather, a walk down to the sea, and fab views of the Welsh hills. Once we got north of Brize, we saw virtually no traffic at all, although according to a guy that had flown in from Redhill, the Farnborough area was manic.

Highly recommended. Just a couple of points to note:

• If you land on 05, land short, and vacate on to 33 to taxy up to the parking area. Don't as I did, land long, in order to vacate at the end in an attempt to taxy anticlockwise to park, as there's a locked gate across the peri track and you can't get through that way.
• If you're going to walk to the beach, don't, as we did, miss the gate to the footpath and walk along the road instead. The footpath (albeit quite a bit further to walk) comes out at the sandy end of the beach, and avoids the enormous campsite that is Shell Island.

Caveats aside, we had a great day out. And the air at 5000' was a lot cooler than on the ground.