The Real Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines: A Wonderland Film Wonderland

This programme contains strong language

Somewhere, if we can find it, there should be this big rockface

with a pool of water at the bottom,

which played a considerable part in my dreams...

in the months after my last visit to this part of Britain.

What sort of dreams were they?

Er, they were nightmares.

It's impossible to know after 15 years,

but I think this is absolutely it.

15 years ago, Antony Woodward took part in the Round Britain Rally,

a three-day air race across the UK for amateur microlight pilots.

On the second day of the rally, he crashed.

I was flying very slightly uphill, which is mistake number one.

We'd just got into the air.

The microlight wasn't climbing and it wasn't climbing

and then, I saw a set of wires in front of us.

So, I decided to try and go underneath.

One of the wings clipped one of these wires here, I think.

There was a massive blue flash.

We went vertically upwards. We crashed down.

Just had petrol.

A thin, cold trickle of petrol going down our necks.

The nightmares came later.

In this nightmare,

I'm in a little plane flying round and round,

unable to climb.

I keep going up and up,

but I never get quite high enough to get clear of this rocky face.

What's going through your head?

I don't know - microlighting's fucking dangerous!

HE LAUGHS

Flimsy, often homemade and powered by notoriously unreliable engines...

You're putting your life in the hands

of what is effectively a chainsaw attached to a deckchair.

..microlights were born in the late 1970s as a way for anyone

to experience flying at its most basic and its most exhilarating.

What a place!

The ultimate test for the microlighter is the Round Britain Rally...

Oh, my God!

..three days of non-stop, endurance flying...

It feels like I've wrestled with a gorilla.

..where the aim is to fly around as much of the country as possible.

If we have to ditch in the sea,

if anything was to happen to one of us, it better happen to me.

Oi, oi, oi, oi.

I've never been so scared flying in my life.

Once again, enthusiasts will compete in their magnificent flying machines

in an attempt to recapture the true spirit of amateur aviation.

Yee-ha!

That's me. God! Oh, my God. When was that?

'80s, early '90s. I cannot believe I looked like that.

That was a bad hair phase, I have to say. I think it's better now.

Antony's a writer.

The first book he wrote was about his crash.

15 years on, he's decided to give the rally another go.

I've been told by two instructors,

with real confidence,

I'm the worst pupil they've ever had.

I have no instinctive feel for...

how a plane flies,

I have no spatial awareness

for getting it down

and I'm utterly un-technical.

Most people who fly love tinkering with stuff,

fiddling around with engines and that is all incomprehensible to me.

I first wanted to fly...

..to pull girls. There was nothing romantic about it.

-Were you successful?

-Absolutely not.

Did he fly when you first met him?

Yeah, he was writing his book Propellerhead,

so I was basically reading about how hopeless he was at flying

as I was getting to know him.

Was it attractive that he could fly?

Erm, yeah.

There's something glamorous about it. I really think so.

I'm doing this for a different reason.

I'm doing it cos I almost feel too grown-up and cosy.

I'm now 48 with three children

and it wouldn't really have occurred to me,

but I suddenly thought, "Why not?"

It's unfinished business and flying offers something very exciting

and for me, very frightening and dangerous

which also makes you feel tremendously alive.

'Antony's on his way to visit his old flying instructor, Will,

'who has agreed to be his team-mate for the rally.'

How long is it since you've seen him?

I was thinking about this last night.

It's 20 years, I think.

So, time enough for quite a lot to have happened to us both, I guess.

I live here in my log cabin

with my two sons, Peter and Edward,

lots of male pigs, male dog.

No ladies.

Can't get anyone to put up with the isolation of the place, you see.

Will had to give up being a flying instructor

after a car crash in 2007 permanently damaged his back.

You've been fighting, you have. You've got a bump on your neck.

He now keeps pigs, but has jumped at this chance

for one last flying adventure.

For me, it'll be an end of an era, you know.

It's the last time I shall ever do anything like this.

I can't do what I used to do.

So, I'm no longer going to be an instructor.

So, it's a little bit like wrapping up 25 years of instructing in one hit.

Will! How are you, mate? Good to see you!

-Excellent!

-I've got less hair than you as well. That's really good.

Do you find your head gets cold?

Well, yeah, I do. I'm now used to it...

Antony's insisted they compete

in the same type of plane he crashed in - a 1980s Thruster,

which Will has spent the past few days putting back together.

-This is my toy shed.

-There it is! Oh, beautiful. Good colours, too.

Look at that. Christ, it's in beautiful order. Look at that.

-Is it as you remember it?

-Oh, gorgeous Thruster. I mean, look at it.

-Supermarket trolley back wheel. They are fantastic.

-That's it! You know...

Plastic stacking seats like I sat on all through my school days,

-just bolted to the bottom.

-That's it.

-It is great.

The bathroom light switch.

Yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah, pull the chain.

Look at that. Look at that.

ANTONY LAUGHS

You get yourself strapped in and I will figure out how...

This is the first time Antony has flown a microlight

in almost a decade.

Here we go!

'With safety comes blandness'

and the magic of these machines, to me,

is it gets you right up close

to that sort of scary edge of the envelope,

of what you're doing in this sort of deckchair in the sky.

Clear prop!

'You take off in a little aeroplane and a lot of fresh air comes in

'and the view's fantastic.'

It's just like... You're just taking a step to heaven.

The most difficult and dangerous part of any flying is the landing.

Setting off again, Antony's worst fears are realised.

The engine suddenly falters.

Luckily, while they're still on the ground.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

What happened?

Well, the engine, at a crucial moment,

stopped giving quite as much power as it was and the wonderful thing is,

it did it while we were still on the ground,

rather than three minutes later, when we would have been over trees.

At the weekend, there,

I got my new Ray-Ban Aviator glasses.

Tom Cruise, eat your heart out! Top Gun-style.

16-year-old Mikey McMahon is competing in the rally with his dad, Paul,

who separated from Mikey's mother six years ago.

It's my first time to do something like this

and I'd say it would bring me closer to my dad as well.

It's going to be talking about flying the whole time.

It's drink, eat, breathe flying, basically.

Mikey's dad Paul runs his own driving school,

but takes every chance he can to get up in the air.

People say, "You're in the same place every weekend." I say, "I'm never in the same place."

The clouds change, the winds change, the seasons change

and once you leave that ground, the sky is a different place.

You can fly to the same destination every single day of your life

and be somewhere different every day.

So, have you always been into flying?

Yeah, I was brought up on it.

There was a stage where I went off it

and I felt a bit scared of flying and then, I gave...

-Scared?

-Mmm, I was afraid of turbulence.

I didn't like going up in passenger jets,

I didn't like going up in any plane. I made any excuse not to go up.

What do you think made you scared about it at that point?

What made me scared, I think, was my dad's crash.

He went up, took off,

the telephone wire went across the bar in front of the plane

and it snapped and turned him round 180 degrees

and straight into the ground at 60 miles an hour.

He said he's lucky to be alive on it

and, er, that sort of put me off.

Paul is collecting his son to fly in his microlight to England,

where the rally begins in two days' time.

-Right, let's go, son.

-Bye!

Miss you already!

Oh, my God.

Oh, I've got big butterflies. Well, not butterflies.

Pterodactyls floating round in my stomach now for him now.

It's awful, isn't it? I feel sick.

In order to take part in the rally,

Paul and Mikey first have to fly their microlight

over 72 miles of Irish Sea.

If their engine fails, it could be fatal,

as they'd be forced to ditch in the icy waters below.

The better option would be not to go across the sea at all,

but then, we live on an island. We have to do it.

Are you getting nervous?

This is an exciting trip, it's an adventure and that's what it's supposed to be.

If we need to come back at any time because you're not happy

or uncomfortable or you panic or anything like that,

we'll have a little chat

and I will turn that aircraft round and come back, OK?

This is breaking new ground for me.

This is actually like cutting an umbilical cord for me

because I have purposefully not taken Michael on trips,

purely because of the sea crossing.

On my own, I'm responsible for me.

But if anything was to happen to him, I don't think I'd ever...

I don't think I'd ever live with myself.

Now, I know you're scared. Don't want you feeling under pressure.

OK? But I need to know by four o'clock.

If you turn around to me in half an hour...

If you turn around to me at four o'clock and say,

"No, Dad, I can't do it", we'll wheel it in here

and we'll head off home.

-Where are you right now in your head?

-Don't know.

'Paul's decided their best window to do the 40-minute sea crossing,

'is right now.'

How you feeling, Paul?

Not great.

I want to go, but I want to go for me and him.

I don't want to go if he's not going to be happy with it.

He's a sensitive young kid and I'm very, very concerned about him.

I might have to pull the plug meself, now. It's just, ah!

But what can you do?

Hello.

You all right?

What's wrong?

I'm scared.

I just looked in his eyes, I could see, there was...

There wasn't even the worry, there was a terror in his eyes.

His bottom lip was trembling, his whole face turned pale.

That's thinking about getting into it.

I just don't want to do him any damage.

In Wales, Antony's having his own second thoughts about the rally.

I'm feeling a lot more scared about it than...

I think I admitted to myself.

Will is a gung-ho bush pilot

who wants to win.

But it matters to me to survive.

That has made me think about doing the rally more,

because I'm in a different position now to when I did it before,

I had nothing to lose, I was single. Now I've got three little children.

'I don't trust that engine an inch.

'Everything can go wrong.'

Back in Ireland, Paul is waiting for Mikey's decision.

-How's it going?

-Feeling good, still scared and nervous,

but you're not going to do a trip without being scared and nervous.

Two and a half hours now, we're in a different country, we're on holidays!

So just over the sea, I'm just going to see tonight,

keep myself calm and talk to Dad the whole time. Deep breaths.

You're going to do it?

I'm going to do it. It's something I'd kick myself over afterwards

if I don't do it, but...

I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna go and do it now.

See ya, Jill. Thanks for coming out.

Mikey, load her up.

-Bye.

-Bye, baby.

See you, Michael. Well done.

Clear prop!

Hey, Da, is it natural to still be scared and nervous?

Too fucking right - I am!

-That is a nasty crosswind, son. So be ready for it.

-Yep!

-Are you ready?

-Yeah.

-Let's go.

-Round Britain, son, here we come.

-Woo-hoo!

-Ah, man, we are marching along now.

-Are we?

-89 mile an hour, look.

-Wow.

Well, there she is, son, there's the seaside.

-Hey, Da?

-Yeah?

-Is it all right if I say a little prayer?

-Course it is.

Here we go, son. Closer now.

'I sat there and the tension was building.'

Dad, I'm scared.

It's all right.

As we coasted out, I felt a streak of panic in me

and I was about to say, "No, no, I want to go back,"

but then I don't know what happened, I just went for it.

I tell you, fair play to you, son, you're brave enough.

Do you know what?

-What?

-I'm proud of you, son.

There she is, son. There's Wales!

We'll be crossing the coast in about two minutes.

I'm going, "Shh, Da, don't jinx it,"

and then as we come over, I remember looking down like that

and watching the liquid turn back to solid ground.

Hey-hey, son, there she is!

-That's the longest flight we've ever done together.

-Yeah!

Oh, the boys are back in town!

The Eagle has landed.

I went out and did it and I'm really, really happy now.

As competitors from all over Britain gather in an airfield

in the Midlands, there's one man that everyone's waiting for.

Richard Meredith Hardy is probably the leading adventurer,

I would say, in microlighting.

He'll be trying hard, he's done the Round Britain many times.

He's kind of done everything, really, I think.

The pinnacle of Richard's career was when he flew to Australia,

any pilot that can do that is just at the peak of the sport.

You'll have a hard job keeping up with him.

Any chance you might beat him?

Absolutely not, no!

Richard Meredith Hardy is the President of the International Microlight Commission,

and one of the favourites to win the rally.

I've got various machines in here,

variously in states of disrepair.

This old thing took me to Cape Town in 1985, '86.

And this one, I won the World Championships in.

I was the first person to successfully fly over Everest.

A bunch of people were standing on the summit

and we waved at each other,

and in fact, my photographs are the first ever photos of,

aerial photos of people on Everest.

Extraordinary, really.

'I've lived here all my life.'

My parents' house is up here as well.

How would you describe your upbringing?

Well, I suppose slightly eccentric,

but then, we're English, you know.

Come on.

There he is.

What was Richard like at that age in that picture?

He was ten then.

Different, I think, is the answer!

Hmm, well...

THEY LAUGH

The aim of the rally is to fly around as much of Britain

as possible, in any direction.

Teams score points every time they fly over one of 66 designated

turn points, scattered up and down the country.

OK, so this is all of the turn points.

We're starting at Preston Capes in Northamptonshire, which is there.

It tends to be that the further away ones

are worth more than the nearer ones.

Somewhere like Cape Wrath is worth 200 points,

the ones down south are all worth 50 points.

So whatever happens, the most important strategy is

that for every minute that you're on the ground, you've lost a mile.

So you've gotta be flying, flying, flying.

If you stop for fuel, you stop for fuel, put in fuel and go,

no frigging around, drinking cups of tea and stuff.

There they are, there they are.

Teams can only fly during daylight,

and one of the toughest challenges of the rally is navigation.

We're working off the seat of our pants a bit because we've got no navigational systems or anything,

-so we have to do it all by...

-Map and compass!

-That's it, the old-fashioned way.

And hope my back holds out.

Otherwise you might be going halfway around solo!

Actually, to do the whole rally

would be a wonderful, wonderful achievement,

and to win is the icing on the cake,

and I mean, I like the idea of winning.

I like that idea of winning, too.

I mean, I don't want to just take part, I want to win.

The night before the rally,

the competitors have gathered for a detailed briefing.

23 teams are competing,

in microlights of all shapes and sizes.

Curry's all right?

Each team will have a logging device that records which turn points

they fly over, to calculate their score.

Ladies, gentlemen, good evening.

At the end of three days,

the team with the most points will be the winner.

Tomorrow morning, the first plane out is at 0900.

The aircraft are leaving in two-minute intervals.

So these are the only loggers which will give you

a score for the weekend. So you must have one of these.

Let's have a good one. Cheers, folks.

APPLAUSE

0900, standby.

It's the first day of the rally.

Getting the start right is vital.

Each team has a window of just two minutes in which to take off.

If they miss their slot, they go to the back of the queue.

One minute.

Four, three, two, one, go!

Off like a stabbed rat.

The boy is keen.

Woodward, are you ready?

-Are you ready?

-All done, mate, all done!

You're ready? Helmet and harness secure?

Helmet and harness secure.

-Round Britain Rally, son.

-Let's do it, Da!

One minute.

Four, three, two, one, go!

Oh, God, I've poured water all over this!

I think it's fair to say we are the least organised team here.

Bye.

-So you've missed your slot?

-We've missed our slot, all Antony's fault of course.

Er, Woodward can't get himself organised.

But it's all good, because now if we lose, I can blame Antony.

Bloody hell!

'His faffing is really very frightening to watch and be around.'

You know the chap that had to crash land in the Hudson River?

He was cool and calm and measured.

And that would not be him.

Flip up.

-Is this how Daddy normally leaves?

-Yes.

-Late?

-Yes.

-Faffing?

-Yes.

-Yeah?

Fuck me, come on, we've got to go!

They should have got ready before we got here.

Yeah. Do you think you'd have done it better?

-Yeah, I think I'd have already left.

-Yeah.

-Right?

-Aye, all right.

One hour after their allocated slot,

Antony and Will finally make it into the air.

Their plan is to fly first to Daventry Beacon,

worth 50 points, just five minutes away.

But after 15 minutes in the air, Daventry is nowhere to be found.

'I'm looking at the map and I said to Antony,'

"That's the turn point there," I'm holding the map up to it,

"There's a turn point there." "Yes," he says, "I can see that,

"and here's where we took off from, this marker.

"Ah, oh, er, that might not be the airfield, actually,"

"I just made a black mark around about where I thought it was."

"So this black dot which says airfield might not be airfield,

"this might be just a black dot that could be anywhere?"

"Yes."

We were about six miles to the wrong place

and so there's that feeling of embarrassment, oh, God, the first take-off,

we got lost within five minutes and came back to base.

I mean, that's just unheard of, you know, you just don't do that,

you just don't do that.

What a piss-off. Absolute fucking piss...

-Sorry about that.

-Shit!

I was really hacked off.

Will was very competitive to start with,

I think he wanted to win, er, and a couple things thwarted this,

this dream for him, one was probably his co-pilot.

Antony, I can't fucking believe you done that to me!

Well, I just thought, this guy, I can't...

If he's going to put a dot in the map in the middle of nowhere,

I just can't trust him to do anything.

We're going to get so lost, I'm going to do everything.

Never let Antony mark the airfield - he puts it in the wrong place.

Richard has picked up a strong tailwind,

and is already half way up the west coast.

His plan is to reach the top of Scotland by the end of day one,

but having already flown 200 miles,

his microlight is running low on fuel.

Well, we do need to do something about fuel.

I have my cunning scheme. This is my mid-air refuelling device.

So, what we do is we've got that bit.

We open the fuel - let's turn that round

so we've got a bit of a better view.

We open the fuel cap,

we shove that in the tank, like that.

Then we get the other bit, just here.

Shove that in the jerry can.

Rather than wasting time landing,

Richard's brought along two jerry cans of fuel,

in the place of a co-pilot.

Just take off my seatbelt for a minute. There we are.

'I won't say I don't get scared sometimes,

'because you can scare yourself quite easily.'

Oh, dear! Why does it have to be so bumpy?

But flying a microlight is no more dangerous than driving your car down the road.

Then the final part of the trick,

let's do my seat belt up again actually, might fall out...

..bloody coat's blowing up like a Michelin man as well, er...

Oh.

Right, now we have fuel whizzing down our pipe

into the tank.

Very good.

He does what appear to be crazy things,

and the worst thing was when he did Everest.

That was the one thing I didn't want him to do, I really did think,

I really thought they would die when they went off to do that,

er, in fact, I...

-Didn't you stop him?

-I tried. I did try. I was so angry.

I tried very hard to stop him from doing it -

he was determined, so I was absolutely furious,

and of course when he came back I was incredibly proud.

# Do your balls hang low? Can you swing them to and fro?

# Can you tie them in a knot? Can you tie them... #

Paul and Mikey are making good progress,

heading towards Salisbury in Wiltshire.

# Can you throw them over your shoulder like a continental soldier?

# Do your balls hang low? #

He's like a big child!

-Well, do you like all this flying here?

-Yeah, it's cool.

The turbulence doesn't bother you any more, does it?

No, it's still a little bit scary.

'You're always going to love what your da's doing.'

If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be into all this flying.

'This obsession...

'You wake up on a Monday morning wishing it was Friday.

'You start to wish your life away.'

Hey-hey!

'You just can't wait until you're going again.'

It becomes all-consuming. It does take over your life.

So if you fancy having a relationship with anyone -

and that includes your kids, your friends, your wife,

it doesn't matter - if you want a relationship with anybody,

once you start doing this, get somebody who likes this, too.

Because it just ain't going away.

After their disastrous start,

Antony and Will head towards Devon.

Will is still reluctant to let Antony fly the plane,

but a couple of hours in the cramped cockpit of the thruster

is taking its toll on his bad back.

The problem is, is that if it goes completely bad, my left leg

goes completely numb so I can't even feel the rudder pedal, you know.

With Will in serious pain,

Antony has to take the controls for the first time in the rally,

and divert to the nearest airfield, Enstone, near Oxford.

He also has to land the plane.

Landings are impossible, I mean, landings...

There's an old flying adage, you know, "What is a good landing?

"A good landing is a landing

"from which the pilot can walk away unaided."

As you get nearer the ground, you are more, with every moment,

more aware of what's going to happen when you screw this up.

The landings were bloody hopeless.

I thought, "Yeah, we could have a bit of work cut out here,

"Antony cannot land a plane, he's definitely forgotten that bit."

Fucking hell.

-Oh, my God.

-Well done, William.

This is bad.

After leaving Salisbury, Paul and Mikey are on their way to Somerset,

when they suddenly run into bad weather.

You all right?

I just don't like that in front of us.

It's fine, I can see right through it,

I can see the horizon beyond it.

Now we're going to get a kicking off of these hills.

Being in the microlight in bad turbulence

is like being in a washing machine with it turned on.

Oy-yoy-yoy!

It's like, "Oooooh!"

Oh, you bastards. That was a big one.

And with the turbulence we had on the rally in the rain,

it was actually like we WERE in a washing machine!

-Do you want your daddy to sing to you, son?

-No.

Go on, do you want your daddy to sing you a little song,

-would that make you feel better?

-No.

I've got a really itchy head, I'm cold.

Michael, this cold thing, we've got to sort this out. I'm not.

-My jacket keeps unzipping!

-Well, zip it back up.

-I do!

-Well, then, it should keep you warm!

-It doesn't!

I remember going to Da, "Come on, come on, come on, come on,

"are we there yet?" He goes, "No, no, we're only two hours away," I was like, "Only two hours away?!

"This is shocking!" I say, "Can we not be only ten minutes away?"

-All right, we're going to be on the ground shortly, OK?

-OK.

I want to know what you think, not just "OK".

"OK, I don't care, just get me back on the ground!"

And it was at that point I realised that I can't push Michael too far,

I don't want to put him off something that he already loves.

It's a bit like if you like Mars bars, cos one day you'll eat a whole box of them

and there's just one Mars bar that'll put you off Mars bars for life,

and I didn't want to get into that scenario.

Beaten by the low weather front, and his son's even lower mood,

Paul gives up on his ambitions for the day.

How was that?

I feel slightly sicky.

I can still feel... HE LAUGHS

Enjoying this?

Not at the moment, no!

Richard ends day one as the only competitor to reach

the highest-scoring location of the rally, Cape Wrath.

Golf sierra echo echo echo. Scottish information.

'Golf echo echo, come in.'

Golf echo echo, I'm just now at Cape Wrath

at 5,500 feet.

So here we are at the top of Scotland.

'My primary ambition is to fly over all seven summits,

'which are the highest mountains on every continent.

'My friend Angelo was very good at raising the money for these things,

'he was killed in a stupid accident, riding as a passenger

'in a light aircraft, and the pilot killed them both.

'It was a great tragedy, really,

'because we were building up to going to Antarctica.'

Oh, you bastard, come on!

After leaving Enstone, Will and Antony fly on to Devon,

hoping to pick up a few last points before sunset.

But with Will still in constant pain, they decide to call it a day

and return to his house,

worth no points...

..and with Will doing the landing.

Well done.

Oh, thank fuck for that.

OK, that's it, that's what we want for the morning.

'I think it was a sort of, you know, series of cock-ups, in many ways.

'The complexities today were my relationship with Will.'

I think we both have this great liking for each other,

but we don't actually know each other well

and we come from probably quite different worlds.

There is inevitably a teacher and pupil relationship, where

it's hard to question his decisions, so that's where the tension lies.

I suspect if he was feeling honest, he might not,

he might not choose me as his flying companion, but...

but he's got me, so that's sort of, that's sort of it!

After flying almost 700 miles in one day,

Richard is bedding down for the night at Dornoch,

north of Inverness.

Unlike Will and Antony, he won't be benefiting from home comforts.

So where do you sleep tonight?

My tent is just there.

It's a very low tent.

It's the wing.

So you sleep under the wing?

Yeah, perfectly nice, walls and roof.

It's the way you like it, isn't it, like that?

Well, I mean, the answer is, is that if I lost a bit of this,

then I might be able to carry a tent!

It's the second day of the rally,

the same day that Antony had his crash 15 years ago.

With Will still suffering,

it's up to Antony to do all of the flying today.

We need to get going, we really do need to get going, we're late again.

Will you start her?

Certainly. You climb in and climb aboard, captain. Captain Woodward.

I think he was a little bit wary before we went up, you know,

he looked a little bit sort of white and, er, "Oh, God, this is it."

I thought about crashing every second of the rally.

-OK?

-Yeah, all go.

When Will and I were taking off with all our kit and stuff

and everything, when the machine, the microlight,

was clearly massively overloaded,

er, that felt very like the time we crashed.

I felt really scared at one point there, and I thought

we were hardly going to get it off the end of the runway.

'All I'm thinking about as I fly along in those things is

'where to land when the engine stops.'

I don't want to go up and get rained on again.

I'm sick of being wet and cold.

Mikey didn't enjoy the first day of the rally,

and today he's in no rush to get back in the air.

I don't know my son as well as I thought I did.

I hold my hands up to it, I don't know him as well as I thought I did.

I wasn't sure exactly what he could cope with and I'm not sure he could

cope with a whole rally, so let's cut it down and have a holiday.

-Navigator I Spy, right?

-OK.

Yeah, you go first.

I spy with my little eye something beginning with C.

With the pressure now off, Paul and Mikey spend the day hopping

to local airfields and doing a little sightseeing...

..mostly on the ground.

Do you want to go and look at this hangar? Come.

-You like going round these airfields, don't you?

-Yeah.

-Here's a C42 coming in the door.

-Oh, yeah.

We have the biggest laugh ever.

And I don't know what I'd do without him.

-Nice, isn't it?

-Yeah.

What did dawn on me was just how proud Michael is of his dad -

that Michael's dad is Michael's hero.

And that dawned on me without it ever having been said.

'Michael will always be my little boy.

'It doesn't matter if he's 40 or 50 years old -

'he'll be my best friend and he'll always be my friend.

'He's the best part of my world.'

-We're not going anywhere!

-Oh, this is lovely.

Imagine, we could be munching on this burger or we could be up there flying.

-Yeah, I'd rather down here.

-There just is no comparison, is there?

-Erm, right...

-Switches on, mate, you strap yourself in.

Antony and Will have managed to fly all of 40 miles to Halwell in Devon.

And so far, Antony has done all the flying.

-Can I... Can I carry on flying?

-Of course.

Good man.

I think Will realised he wasn't going to win this race, erm,

this rally. So something in him changed,

and he relaxed a lot more about the race, and erm...

I think I became more competitive.

For God's sake, we're in a competition here - could you stop talking!

I just got into the fun of it, just thought,

"Why spoil a good race by being competitive? Let's just fly and see what happens, you know."

Clear prop!

Antony transformed, he just completely...

seemed very happy, really, really into...

into what was going on, you know.

MUSIC: "Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard" by Simon and Garfunkel

And it was a particularly fantastic flight.

They're looking for the Cerne Abbas Giant, worth 50 points.

Richard, meanwhile, doesn't waste a second, racing down the entire

length of the east coast of Britain, hoovering up points.

What a place!

Richard did this flight from London down to Cape Town

and I went along and drove the truck for him,

and I sort of stepped out of my London high-heeled shoes

and pleated skirt of the '80s

and off we set across Africa.

It was quite a sharp learning curve for me, I can tell you,

but, yeah, it was about the best year of my life, I think, really.

What most attracted you to Richard?

Oh...

..the eyebrows!

It was just that life could be different with him.

It was not going to be ever normal,

and it hasn't.

'My mother had an accident which put her in a wheelchair

'when I was four, and I stayed at home

'to look after my mother as her legs.

'I learnt to get her out of bed, to help her to dress,

'to put on her stockings.'

I would in due course learn to dress her bed sores, er,

and all these sorts of things, so you see parts of your mother, I guess,

most children never do, and I think it adds to the feeling of claustrophobia.

You feel this cage has descended over your life.

And flying is the supreme antidote to that sort of claustrophobia.

Out of everything I've ever flown,

in the world, you cannot beat the basic microlight in flying,

you just can't beat it.

It might be a flying deck chair, but it's total freedom.

You've heard the expression free as a bird - that's what it is,

and for me, if I can't fly, I'm not free.

Well, tomorrow's the last day, we're hoping to win it, actually...

It's the final day of the rally.

From all across the country,

every team is heading back to the start point.

The challenge is to get there at a precise time.

But there's a penalty for being late.

One of the crucial things on the rally is getting back here

at an exact time, to the minute, we are timed for getting back,

it's 4.24.

Every minute that goes by after 4.24, we're losing 50 points.

So if we're ten minutes late,

we've probably wiped off the last two days flying that we've done.

That's the time, 7.59.

Eight o'clock. OK, we can go.

We're lazy. You can probably see that we're still in bed,

we've got a lovely bed, lovely bed last night,

oh, great sleep, telly,

little bit of brekkie this morning, it was fabulous.

Full of optimism, Will and Antony still dream of winning.

The first competitors have started to land back at Preston Capes.

But after spending the morning in bed,

Paul and Mikey have only just started.

At the last moment, a threatening weather front moves in,

creating extreme turbulence.

-Whoa!

-These are nasty thermals.

-Yeah, I don't like this.

-No, neither do I.

I have two pieces of traffic, Dad.

Over to our right, one slightly above us,

one low down, looks like a flexwing.

'Preston Capes ground, Echo India Delta Romeo Tango.'

Romeo Tango, Preston Capes, go ahead.

Echo India Delta Romeo Tango's now finals to land.

-We're not going to get down, are we?

-Yeah, we are.

Oh, fucking hell!

-Oh, that hurt, that was rough, did that hurt?

-Yeah.

This is, er, Woodward?

Woodward, aye.

Despite the strong winds,

and with seconds to go before their time slot,

Antony decides to attempt the landing.

It was very important to Will to be a good landing

and he wanted to do it, I think, but I insisted I was going to do it.

The sense of relief of touching down that last time is, it was intense.

It was, it was a great landing, and it was...

it wasn't just a great landing, it was, it was a terrific feeling.

Woodward... tell me how many minutes late?

16.24 and he landed at 16.25.

-One minute.

-Not bad.

-Very good.

We'd done it, we'd finished, and, er, and my family were there

and I could see them as we came down, it was great.

You have no idea of the stress...

-Daddy!

-Hello, darling!

Hello!

That's Richard, that's Richard.

Well, I am completely and 100% knackered.

With the last plane down, the counting begins.

Each team's tracker is collected to work out where they've flown,

whether they've hit or missed their turn points,

and what their final score is.

Winners and losers

are divided into categories -

those equipped with satnavs

and those, like Will and Antony,

who used just a map and a compass.

In, er... Let's not beat about the bush, in last place...

-Has to be!

-Has to be!

..with 236 points,

-Paul McMahon.

-Ah, bow, Mikey.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

We did it!

We did it, son, we did it.

With Paul and Mikey taking last place in the satnav category,

Will and Antony in their category are also last.

Ah, that's lovely, thank you.

With 2,000 points,

Richard Meredith Hardy.

And Richard, despite flying all the way to Scotland,

missed Cape Wrath by just 15 metres,

and only manages sixth place.

15 metres! Can you believe it? 15 bloody metres.

Over... Flying across all that bloody sea,

and it's from here to that car.

It's been a long gap, but it's like...

It's like a friendship that was destined to be.

It didn't happen 20 years ago, but it seems to have happened now.

It's a bit like that, really. I don't think the connection

will be lost, and joking aside, who knows what next year might bring?

Sixth place, I'm sure I can do better than that,

so, er, next year maybe.

Good luck for next year!

It's been totally emotional. Mate, fantastic.

I'll certainly fly again with Will, who is, you know,

who is a lovely mate and will be always, I think.

To me, it's like a flying holiday,

it's brilliant, really enjoyed it, such a laugh.

Er, yeah.

For you to do what you did, it's brilliant.

Brilliant, you are a man now.

You are a man now. Grown up and you are a man now.

And next time we do it, we'll do it in your plane and you fly me.

Michael's not any more important to me now than before we left,

it's just that I never realised how important he was to me

in the first place, and now I do.

He even worried about me

and that's... I found, "Wow, I've never seen him like this before."

I knew he cared for me, but I didn't know

he'd worry about me the whole time.

-Oh, Michael, you've got some guts, you know that?

-Really?

He had a medal for finishing the rally,

which still has pride of place in his bedroom,

but you have to sit back and wonder, is it pride of place

because we finished the rally,

or is it pride of place because we went away for a few days,

and we had a great time?

And I like that little element of mystery,

I'd be happy that I never know which one it is.

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