8 March, block off 08:53. 303 km, 93 minutes, 7,046 ft — and across the Alps alone for the first time.

The route is a cross-section of alpine Austria: Mariazell, the Hochkar, the Gesäuse, the Enns valley, the Grimming, the Radstadt Tauern, and at the end Lake Zell with the Kitzsteinhorn behind it. 274 km from the departure airfield as the crow flies — the second-furthest point in the whole book.

Zell am See in March is deep winter: the runway lies at 2,470 ft between the lake and the Schmittenhöhe massif, three-thousanders all around, and the Kitzsteinhorn stands directly to the south with its glacier in full. The approach leads across the lake, and you land in a bowl of mountains.

Doing that alone — the weather decision, the route planning, the valley wind, an approach into a mountain valley — is a different calibre from a cross-country flight over flat ground.

221 km in 68 minutes, alone, from 16:42. Across the Vienna Woods, past Vienna, out to Lake Neusiedl, back over the Leitha mountains. The only one of all 95 lines in the logbook to read: day/night.

The flight starts in daylight and ends in darkness — night from 17:35, the landing at 18:01 counts as a night landing. This is the first practical use of the rating finished four weeks earlier: no longer practising at night, simply flying and no longer having to care when the sun goes down.

105 knots average over 68 minutes — a flight that simply runs. Mid-March, late afternoon, the landscape between winter and spring, and the full round trip: the edge of the Alps, the city, the steppe lake, the chain of hills, and lights at the end.

It is the flight you make when you do not need a reason.

Alone in D-EUTC for the first time. 123 km, 40 minutes, three landings, out to Lake Neusiedl.

The first time solo on a type is always a small repeat of the first solo flight — only with considerably more context. You know what you are doing; you just do not yet know exactly how this aeroplane feels while you do it.

181 km, 63 minutes, four landings, in OE-DCL, with a new name in the crew field.

An April afternoon over Lake Neusiedl with four landings: sounds like type training or a refresher. The rhythm — a long distance, several landings — fits both.

The second-highest flight in the whole book: 8,477 ft, alone, in D-ELFH. 155 km in 53 minutes.

The route is a lap of honour over the local mountains: Hohe Wand, Schneeberg, Rax, Semmering. Those are the four silhouettes you see in the west every day from Bad Vöslau — and which throughout the training you only ever saw from below and from the side.

At 8,477 ft the Schneeberg (6,811 ft) lies a good 1,600 ft beneath you. You look down on the Klosterwappen, see the rack railway like a thread on the slope, and behind it the Höllental cuts through to the Rax. From there the view runs south across the Semmering into Styria.

A flight with no task, no destination, no second person. Simply because it is possible.

An entry that breaks the pattern: the flight does not start at Vöslau but at Vilshofen an der Donau in Lower Bavaria. 295 km, 97 minutes, alone.

The route follows the Danube east: over the Bavarian Forest, past Passau, where the Inn and the Ilz join the Danube and three rivers of different colours run side by side. Then across the Waldviertel, past Zwettl, down into the Wachau, over St. Pölten and the Vienna Woods to Vöslau.

A flight home from a weekend trip, at 5,646 ft above the granite uplands of the Waldviertel. Measured from the departure point, the furthest point is 239 km away — the third-largest figure in the logbook.

Block off 07:26 on a Saturday at the end of April. 199 km, 64 minutes, alone, across the Vienna Woods, Vienna and Lake Neusiedl.

The earliest departure of the year. And the best. At half past seven in April the air over the Vienna Basin still stands completely still, the thermals have not started, the haze hangs in the hollows, and a flat yellow light lies over everything. Anyone who has been over the Marchfeld at that hour understands why pilots get up early.

Destination: Hatě near Znojmo, entered in the logbook as CZ-0163 — a small airfield immediately on the Austrian-Czech border, six kilometres south of Znojmo. 114 km, 37 minutes, alone.

The way there leads across the Vienna Woods, past the Danube near Tulln, through the Weinviertel and over the border into the Thaya valley. The third country in this logbook.

From above, the Thaya valley is a surprise: in the middle of flat wine country the Thaya cuts a deeply notched, wooded meander gorge — a national park on both sides of the border, and from 3,240 ft you see both halves at once.

The longest flight in the logbook: Bad Vöslau — Portorož. 448 km, 133 minutes, 344 km to the furthest point. Alone.

The route runs straight across southern Austria — the Rosalia range, the Bucklige Welt, the Styrian hill country — then over the border into Slovenia, across the karst near Postojna, and then the landscape does something it does nowhere else in central Europe: it stops.

After two hours of hills, forest and karst plateau the Adriatic opens up. Portorož lies on a spit of land above the salt pans of Sečovlje, the runway sits right by the water, and behind it Piran stands on a peninsula in the sea with its Venetian bell tower.

From the first circuit at Bad Vöslau to this flight it is 14 months and 85 flights. This is the reason you do it.

Block off 07:25, 265 km, 84 minutes, alone. Lake Neusiedl, the Rosalia range, the Bucklige Welt — 102 km out and back again.

A June morning shortly after half past seven, 5,030 ft. At this time of year the fields in the Burgenland are still green, the Bucklige Welt lies in stripes of mist and sun, and the air is so calm that you can let go of the aeroplane for a moment.

144 km, 46 minutes, two landings, in the C172. Across the Vienna Woods, St. Pölten, Krems and the Kamp valley.

Over the course of this logbook Krems-Langenlois has gone from "exciting unfamiliar airfield" to "somewhere you just fly to". Five approaches in a year. That is basically the definition of routine.

93 km, 29 minutes, 104 knots. Across the Kamp valley, Tulln and the Vienna Woods, home.

The shortest cross-country flight of the summer, and one of the fastest. Sometimes flying is simply transport.