Last weekend we went away in our camper van to a nice little site in Glasson Dock, went for a walk on the Saturday morning along the Lancashire Coastal way, found a nice spot checked the Drone map so I could fly out to the Plover Scar lighthouse.
First time flying over any significant body of water so it was a little scary to be honest.
All in all though I enjoyed it and no issues, a short distance further along the coastal path is Cockersand Abbey, a small building on the Lune Estuary. Not much to look at really but seemed ideal to film.
Now I was using my Mavic 4 pro, so was very conscious of the only other buildings close by, being a farm and its barns. I have my A2 CofC and was in Cine mode so was confident I was doing all I should be doing.
Kept well away from them and all was going well. That is until I tried the “Master Shots” as it went into Dronie and started to rise and reverse I could see it was going to fly over the barns, so I did what I thought was the right thing, pressed the pause button to stop the flight and bring it away, so far so good. At this point 2 birds (I think Plovers) decided that the now hovering Mavic 4 was a threat and started to circle.
I dug into my memories of “how best to avoid birds safely” and increased the altitude the voice in my head telling me that the drone can rise faster than a bird but the bird can dive much faster than the drone, whilst at the same time flying forward and sideways back toward me and away from the farm and the 12th century abbey.
Got the drone down safely thinking I could edit the footage and include “no birds or landmarks were harmed in the making of this video”, quite pleased with myself and the days flying so far, only to realise I was having all sorts of abuse shouted at me from the gate of the farm about 100 meters away. I am deaf in one ear so was not even sure where the abuse was coming from to start with as the Abbey was between me and the disgruntled farmers who were stood behind the relative security of their gate.
I was with my partner , who gave me very clear instructions to not engage and just come away, which I did.
Almost every fibre of me wanted to go over to within normal speaking distance though and apologise for any confusion whilst at the same time asking if they had noticed the 12 Century abbey 100 meters or so from their gate on the very Public Coastal Path, and could they possibly consider that maybe this small piece of history and the few scattered ruins in the field around it were of much more interest than the corrugated roof of their barn?
As my Mavic’s camera was pointing toward the abbey using it as the POI, I cannot be 100 sure that I did not breach the 30m from any uninvolved people who may have been at work in the barn, and the recording stopped when I paused the flight as soon as I realised it was heading that way, but if I did it would have been very briefly and only to avoid the birds.
The experience knocked my confidence quite a bit as it made me question all the pieces of knowledge you read and think yo have learnt, I genuinely wanted to go and speak to the angry farmers to just let them know I had no interest in them or their garden (or by some of the names they were shouting quite possibly their children) but I walked away, didn’t even complete the circular route back to the camp site, went back the way we came.
Have not flown the Mavic since and I know I need to, I know I was not in the wrong and you can’t please all the people all of the time and nor should you have to try to.
Anyway if you want to fly over Cockersand Abbey hope you don’t get shouted at.