Aerial survey of land and sites around Launceston

This town sits high, catching weather that has come over Bodmin Moor from the west and Dartmoor from the east. Wind-driven rain from the south-west is the defining condition through the winter and there is very little shelter anywhere on the surrounding high ground.

For survey work that means fewer usable days than the Somerset or Dorset ground on this list and a need to take the weather when it comes. Larger holdings get planned as two visits from the start rather than optimistically as one.

The farms west of the river run large, with substantial arable and dairy units and field parcels to match. That is efficient ground to fly in one sense, because a big level field covers quickly, and demanding in another, because a whole holding is a lot of flying and a lot of driving between blocks.

The quote reflects the actual shape of the holding rather than a rate per acre. Where the parcels are scattered, the day is planned around the driving; where they are contiguous, most of the day is flying.

The ground falls away sharply from the hilltop into the valley below, and holdings that span both need planning by height band rather than as a single sheet. The same applies to anything running down to the Tamar itself.

River ground brings its own questions: bank condition, erosion, where a fence has been undercut, what the last flood left behind. All of that captures well, with the water surface itself recorded as a gap rather than modelled.

The flatter ground by the main road carries industrial units, yards and haulage operations, and that produces the site work rather than the land work: compounds to record, surfaces to compare, material moving through a yard, access to capture before a contractor changes it.

It is the same underlying capture as a field, planned tighter and flown lower, with the report separating the yard from the land where a job covers both.

This is one of the longest runs from Exeter on the coverage list, and travel is inside the fixed price on every job here. What distance changes is how much fits into one visit.

So a survey out this way is planned to make the drive worth it: the whole holding in one go where the weather allows, or two blocks agreed in advance. What does not happen is a short visit that leaves half the job for another day at another fee.

The exposed elevations in this town are hung with slate for a reason, and a capture that includes buildings shows that construction from an angle nobody normally gets: the hung faces, the ridges, the way the older roofs step down the slope in terraces.

It is worth saying again that this is a land survey and not a building inspection. Anything that needs assessing properly gets pointed at the site in this group built for that work, with the frames from this capture attached so whoever picks it up starts with a picture rather than a description.