Three Handy Travelling Tools.

I have a friend who, like many people, is nervous of flying.  She is off to Iceland in a couple of days, a much-anticipated trip, and I hope you have a lovely time Thea!

I introduced Thea to the free app Flight Radar, so she could not only identify the planes that were flying over her house in Hadleigh, Suffolk, but also so it might slowly dawn on her how many hundreds of them there were every day, and how they never actually suddenly fall from the sky.*

It looks like the London Airport to Amsterdam flight left a little late but will
probably make up the time.

Some years ago Alden the yachtee blogger sent me a link to a really great resource.  It shows you the pattern of winds that exist at the time you are looking, anywhere on the Earth.  And if you click, not only will you zoom in to a spot on the Earth, you can also get your coordinates and the wind speed. An Earth Wind Map, for right now. Amazing.
Very useful if you are sailing in anything from a single-person vessel to gliding in comfort on a cruise ship.  Or if you just want to know the weather somewhere.

Another handy free app for travelling is
MapsMe


MapsMe will locate you anywhere on the Earth (download the area first when you are somewhere where you have wifi) even if you are not connected to the net.  My son James made me get it so I wouldn't get lost in the Swedish forest.  Or maybe so that he wouldn't be worried about me getting lost in the Swedish forest.  One of the two.
Of course it is also brilliant for getting around an unknown town.  I used it in London walking from Victoria Station to my accommodation in Pimlico. You can even 'see yourself' on the bus or in a taxi zooming along a road.  You cannot see yourself in tunnels and on the Underground however.

I dropped a pin where I went in the forest the first time, and so it was very easy to go there again,
and also easy to get back to the pin I dropped when I left the road

All free.  Click on the words below to get more information:

Flight Radar

Earth Wind Map

MapsMe


* well, not very often, anyway.