Unless you have been on holiday in Uzbekhistan for the last couple of months, you can hardly fail to have noticed that Brian Milton finally made it home to Brooklands, Surrey on 21 July, 117 days after leaving, having been buzzed by a Syrian Mig-21, changed an engine in Saudi Arabia, posted fastest times to Corfu, Amman and India, flown through interminable rain and cloud in SE Asia, and then suffered bureaucratic delays in China, Japan, and finally in Russia.

While waiting for permission to be negotiated, Brian was struck by two devastating blows. The delays, coupled with the Russian requirement for a navigator to accompany the aircraft (obliging co-pilot Keith Reynolds to omit the Russian leg) caused Keith to bow out reluctantly. Shortly after that, Brian's sponsor, GT Global, was taken over by American investment company Invesco. The sponsorship money was secure, but backup from the London office was severely curtailed. News on the web page became scarce.

Brian elected to carry on, with his Russian navigator in the back seat for the Russian sector. Despite tipping the aircraft over at the end of the first leg, they carried on. Crossing the Aleutians to Alaska was Brian's first solo leg, and he battled on down through Alaska and Canada to San Francisco to return as close as possible to Passepartout's route in the Jules Verne book whose 125th anniversary the trip celebrated.

Brain & Keith during the early stages of the flight

Crossing the United States to New York, Brian carried on up the east coast, to complete the awesome transatlantic crossing via Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes. By this point Alison Harper and Charles Heil were looking after the PR and Brian's arrival was carried on the BBC news. The GT Global website having been discontinued, Paul Hutchinson took up the reins and provided minute by minute coverage of Brian's progress to Scotland and down through the country.

Brian was accompanied from Orkney by a group of enthusiasts led by John Hunt, and met by as many as could get to see him as he passed down the east side of the country via East Fortune, Bagby, Netherthorpe, White Waltham and finally back to Brooklands, where a large army of pressmen was waiting to watch him accomplish `one of the five hairiest landings of the trip' according to Brian.

The strong gusty winds proved too much for one of the followers who tipped over while taxying, but Brian got down safely, aided by helpers who grabbed his flying wires the minute he was on the deck. Brian was welcomed back by Dave Cole, recently elected chairman of the Royal Aero Club, and coverage of the event in the national press was unlike anything microlighting has seen before, with large pictures in all the dailies, including the front page of the Daily Telegraph.

Brian did many interviews before retiring to France to edit his book - and if the sample in this issue is anything to go by, it will be first on every microlighter's Christmas list. There will be a television series on terrestrial TV as well.

Woke at 050, wrote, cleared up, went to the Met Office and saw the drunk who gave me the winds aloft. They seemed to start from the west at Sondestrum, but went north or north east at Kulusuk.

`They are not very strong', he said, but any wind can knock 20% off my flying speed.

I was in a frame of mind to go, no matter how fearful I felt. The sky looked good, blue with the wasted remains of yesterday's clouds. The satellite picture showed a bank of thin cloud in the centre and to the east of the island, but they seemed to be north of the course I wanted to take. If they were not too high I could fly above them, I reasoned, because I have to acknowledge that the weather on either side of Greenland is different, and it's a question of taking a chance with one side or the other.

I was first into breakfast - coffee, orange juice, cornflakes, a roll with cheese and Marmite - interrupted by a phone call from Andy Webb (the TV producer) trying to make arrangements to meet me. Unusually, ahead of such an important stage, no phone call from Sky TV Karl arranged to pick me up but he was late and I was walking to the hangar when his car appeared. I half-set up the Flyer, then went off with Karl, a local airport official, to ATC to pay another big bill, close to $ 100, for using the airfield. It is expensive inside the Arctic Circle.

I was would up and fatalistic. It was hard for me to comprehend what I was doing, proposing to take the open Flyer over more than 350 miles of trackless ice and snow. Was it really happening to me? Or was it a dream? I had moments of lucidity, but otherwise fell into the familiar routine of preparing the Flyer.

It always seems to take forever, looking at the huge amount of property I had to either stow or wear, but each time I put on a suit I could see tangible proof that I was getting ready. I had a last pee but worried about whether I had too much to drink for breakfast, and then struggled into the survival suit, jacket and last flying suit. As ever, I felt very warm and started to sweat.

I filled the big green bag with all my spare luggage, secured it in the back seat, and pulled the Flyer out of the heated hanger, the rent of which had been waived by Greenland Air. At $ 125/night, this was a considerable saving.

To my left a C-135 started its powerful engines, and when it taxied past I held the Flyer's wing against being blown away. But then it lurched, turned and returned to its bay; Karl said later it had reported an engine fire. I shook hands with him, got in to the Flyer, and spent the usual 5min plugging myself in, the two GPSs, the radio, cameras and microphone. When I started the engine I was more obsessive than ever about checking temperatures and the charging unit; it worked.

I took off heading east, because that is where the wind came from, rolling off the ice-cap. I was persuaded that, if I had an easterly on take-off, the wind would roll as a westerly off the ice-cap on the other side of Greenland. I stayed in touch with ATC and started a slow climb over naked mountains and dark lakes and fiords, warily looking at the ice cap as it rolled into view.

It was difficult to tell, in the far distance, where the ice-cap ended and where low thin white cloud began, but I would get there soon enough. I looked at the trace of Saturday's flight on the GPS, and noted I had turned back 35 miles from take off. This time, the view was clear, my groundspeed not too bad at 50kt after earlier alarm about 38kt, and I pressed on.

For a long while nothing significant happened, except that I kept climbing until I had reached 8,500ft, and it grew very cold. I banged my hands together to keep feeling in the finger tips, and wiggled the toes in my right boot where some of the insulation had crumbled.

I wondered about putting my sunglasses on, against the glare of the sun and the snow, but it meant opening the visor and I was not sure I could get it closed again with all the pressure of my suits and neck warmers.

Three out of the four aircraft who flew from Caunton to wish Brain well at Netherthorpe. He was never lonely during his flight from Scotland.

I felt fearful, because the commitment was so great, and the fears grew suddenly when the radio cut out! The earphones were no longer being charged by the system and had run down; that meant trying to find the emergency back-up system, but not yet, because of the numbing cold.

There is one small man-made presence in the middle of the icecap, an automatic weather station called Dye 2, which I had marked on my GPS. It had come in to view 100 miles from Sondestrum when I lost radio contact, and I was comforted by knowing it was there if I needed to divert and cop-out.

A thin layer of cloud appeared below me and I found it difficult to decide which was snow and which was cloud, so I started to climb again.

On my map I saw that I needed at least 9,000ft to clear any obstacle on my direct route to Kulusuk, so I climbed to 10,000ft and stayed above the cloud. As I climbed, so did the land below, and so did the cloud, and I was forced higher than I had ever been in a microlight, up to 12,000ft where the light was clear, the air was thin and caused me to gasp, and the cold was completely numbing. A layer of ice was formed on the right of the visor by my breath freezing.

Judy Leden congratulates Brain at Bagby

Being above the cloud, now so thick I could not see the ground, was an all or nothing affair. If the engine failed, I faced a horrible few minutes plunging into it and the certain prospect of a ghastly death. I was conscious of this most of the time, but tried to ignore it. Wasn't it the same over a frozen sea in Okhutsk, I asked myself? What is so different about now?

But I could not hear my own voice asking questions because of the duff intercom, and this increased my sense of detachment. I measured my distance above the cloud constantly, keeping the revs up to stay high, nervous about being whited-out, or the cloud bubbling up casually to engulf me and cause the Flyer to be loaded with ice, or mistaking the snow for cloud, something I had thought virtually impossible until I saw it for myself. It was easy enough to believe that story about a pilot crashing without knowing it.

The cloud, which had been widespread but patchy, thickened until I could no longer see the ground, near me or far away. I was isolated from the earth by it, as I was insulated from the rest of the world by my silent earphones. I could only sit and shift around to try and get warm, bang my hands, waggle my shoulders, and anxiously keep an eye on my instruments.

My groundspeed waxed and waned, sometimes down at 44-46kt when I worried furiously about whether I had enough fuel, and at other times above 65kt as the winds changed on a whim.

Fantastic thin cloud patterns appeared in the sky above me, and the contrail of a jet airliner on its way to America made a lined shadow across snow and ice, almost pointing the way to Kulusuk; the shadow stayed with me for an hour.

I lined the Flyer up on wisps of cloud in the distance, but fell away left or right when I lost concentration, and had to constantly steer her straight again.

In my mind I moved in and out of reality. Part of me though about summer days in France, preparing for a writing day, the early morning cycle, a wild 2-mile brakeless ride downhill where I twice met wild boar, the struggle back up to the 700 year old village, a day old copy of the Daily Telegraph, baguettes, butter, apple tarts, home for a shower and listen to a faint Radio 4, and read the newspaper cover to cover, and then 10 or 12 hours, of research or writing. If I should live, that's what I will be doing in three weeks time.

The contrast between my thoughts and reality did not strike me then as surreal.

After 5h, in the far distance I saw the first signs that the world was not completely white and featureless. A line seemed to mark to change from white to blue. As I got closer individual features of mountains and the sea emerged. I risked a descent to 9,000ft as the cloud below me thinned out and I was able to see vague lines and cloud shadows in the snow, and the brilliant cobalt colours of pools of water.

I thought it was less cold and risked taking a glove off to fiddle around in one of my trouser pockets for the emergency radio interface, which I shoved into one earphone and attached to the radio; my left hand hurt for half an hour afterwards. I could hear Sondestrum Radio again - they have superb communications across Greenland - and I radioed in that I had 50 miles to go, more to reassure myself than inform them.

Then the height began getting to me in the old familiar way, and I started a slow descent to ward off those fears. Some rugged mountains slid by under the wing, and a fiord, more rough looking islands half covered in snow, and then the sea again with thousands of broken pieces of ice and the remains of icebergs. I dropped slowly out of the sky, relishing the feeling of being alive again, able to hope and plan once more. Sondestrum asked me to change to the Kulusuk frequency, which picked up immediately I called, and though we were separated by 30 miles, this was reassuring. I was making connections again with the world.

The runway was made of gravel in the lee of a formidable mountain, the last island before 450 miles of open sea to Iceland. I came in to a quick landing which I thought was downwind, taxied past a hovering helicopter, and soon had the Flyer safely bedded down inside a familiar fire engine shed.

Brooklands, time to meet family and friends

They young air traffic controller, Jesper Longsholm Skov, lent me a telephone to call Andy in England (Charles and Alison had gone home, it being after office hours), arranged a hotel and got me fuel. I filled every tank and the 10 litre plastic container, so as to be able to top up tomorrow. I will need every last drop to get to Iceland.

The local station manager asked me if I knew Eppo Neumann. I said I had talked to him on the phone, but never met him.

`That Dutchman was mad', said the manager. `He was here a week, and he asked me on the first day if there was any legal way he could kill his chase plane pilot! He was serious! He had a temper with a fuse this short', and he held two fingers close together.

I wondered how long Eppo and I would have lasted if I had taken up his offer in Nome, Alaska, to fly in Keith's place. I am now convinced that I am flying faster without Keith than we would have flown together, because I don't have any arguments with me over whether the weather is suitable or not to fly-

I had heard that Kulusuk was the most primitive place in Greenland, but I found it ultra-civilised, with phones, faxes, hot showers, beer, even a good bottle of Lussac St Emilion at just over $ 30, which I considered a bargain and drank. But I woke at 1.30 in the morning and have not been able to sleep since. I am sure Sky TV are chasing me, but cannot get through as no one is on the desk.

Looking at the sky, I cannot decide which way the wind is blowing, and will need a decent forecast anyway. Andy says he is meeting me tonight in Reykyavik, but I wonder. Everyone, including me, is getting presumptuous about this flight. I still have 1,000 miles to fly to get to Scotland.

(Reproduced from Microlight Flying - Sep/Oct 1998)