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Madrid-Barajas, Spain - 10th-11th December 2008

When Marcus Jellyman asked me if I fancied joining him and his dad for a couple of days in the sun at Madrid-Barajas I couldn't come up with a reason for not doing it, particularly with Ryanair's fares at £39.99 when we booked.

And so, on Wednesday morning we met up at a freezing cold Stansted for our trip south, convinced that it HAD to be considerably warmer there.

After a bumpy and strangely slow feeling approach we deplaned and began to realise why. It was rather windy, and bitterly cold to boot.

We cleared immigration and caught the Metro to the spot that would be our location for the rest of the day - a roadside embankment offering views of the taxying aircraft. A combination of signs, fences and bushes meant that there were only a limited number of spots that you could actually shoot, but it was still do-able.

With four runways (two landing and two take-off, all used concurrently) serving three terminals, there were occasions where some of the nicer movements didn't venture near us, and sadly that sentiment could be applied to many of the South American carriers.

Iberia are king in Barajas with literally dozens and dozens of aircraft (both long and short-haul) on the deck most times, but there's plenty of other variety to be had too.

It was very noticeable just how few Boeings were on show, and all of the long-haul Spanish carriers we saw made use of the A330, with the Air Comet looking particularly lovely in the late afternoon sunshine.

Unlike home, it wasn't dark here until 1730 or so, but we lost the sun around 1630 and so headed to our hotel, via a few cold ones in the terminal building.

The plan for the next day was to shoot the approaches, however, while crossing the road to reach that point Marcus spotted the Aero Sur lump that had been the main reason for the visit in the first place on the deck. Consequently we agreed to head back to the same spot as the day before. The only question was how we would get there!

After a lengthy walk, a taxi ride, and the same Metro journey, we eventually arrived. I reckon we'd have got there just in time to check-in for our flight had we tried to do it all on foot!

I put the 2X on the 120-300 to try to get some slightly different stuff, but heathaze was much more prevalent than the previous day, and I ended up binning quite a few shots as a consequence.