Microlight Mike’s amazing sky safari

WHEN faced with a mid-life crisis, most men turn to an open top car or a younger woman.

But TV producer Mike Taylor took a more unusual route to happiness: a one-way ticket to Johannesburg and a microlight adventure of a lifetime.

This saw him fly over stunning scenery such as the Victoria Falls, the salt pans in Botswana and game reserves in Zambia.

Now he has written a book about his bid to become the first person to take an aircraft from Cape Town to London by road — with an array of amazing flights along the way.

The 42-year-old embarked on his epic journey on a whim after going through a divorce.

He is not sure where the idea came from and explained: “It was a mid-life crisis, it was an early one because I was only 38 at the time!

“It just happened one day. I immediately thought ‘blow it’, and got on the Internet and booked a one-way ticket to Johannesburg and a course of flying lessons. It was just spur of the moment and two weeks later I was there.

“I wanted to drive all the way back to London and not miss anything on the ground, and then fly whenever I wanted. But it was a bt more complicated. I had to get permission from the Civil Aviation Authority and deal with a lot of red tape.”

Mike, who grew up in Chadderton, bought the microlight (which was built in Rochdale) over the Internet in South Africa and had lessons in Johannesburg before setting off with a battered Land Rover and trailer.

People where he had trained set up a sweepstake on which country he would meet an untimely end and his brushes with death included crashing on his maiden flight after wrongly assembling the microlight, being charged by an elephant and flying into mini tornados (dust devils) over the desert.

But that didn’t stop him. He said: “The whole thing was littered with brilliant experiences. When I was in Malawi I was commissioned by the wildlife department to do aerial surveys.

“I got to know them quite well and they asked me if I would play the role of an illegal ivory buyer in a cross-border sting operation to catch elephant poachers. I bought several tusks in the Zambian bush. It was all quite scary. I was only told on the night of the operation one of the targets was a known murderer.”

Mike also flew 43 miles over water to an island in the middle of Lake Malawi: “I had to have an emergency life raft in case I had to ditch into the water. I had a colourful kiddie’s inflatable dinghy with seashells printed on it. Thankfully it was not used!

“One of the best things for me was flying the local Africans around because they had never seen anything like it. When I landed, whole villages would come out. When I took people up they loved it and when they landed they were hoisted shoulder high and treated like astronauts.”

The avid Oldham Athletic fan (he took part in the charity game at Boundary Park in 2004 to help keep the club afloat) followed his team’s fortunes by text message. And although he now lives in London, his book “Land of Cloud Cuckoo” has lots of nods to his home town.

His trip eventually ended when he crashed a few miles into the northern hemisphere in Kenya after clocking up 20,000 miles in his Land Rover.

The trip cost about £40,000 — he had to re-mortgage his house twice — but Mike has now been offered a pilot’s job in Botswana.

Just as well he didn’t take the advice of his flying instructor who told him: “There’s two things you should never buy over the Internet. That’s a microlight and a Russian wife.”




The book is available at www.landofcloudcuckoo.com