Aerial survey of land and sites around Ottery St Mary

This is inland East Devon, out of the worst of the Atlantic weather and away from the moor, and it shows in the number of usable flying days. Compared with the moor edge or the north coast, a booking here is far more likely to happen on the date it was made.

The valley floor holds mist and damp, which pushes a still winter morning back by an hour or so, but that is a minor constraint next to what the exposed parts of this region deal with.

There is gliding activity on the ridge north of this valley, and gliders are quiet, fast and not where an inattentive person expects them to be. Any survey planned on the higher ground towards the Blackdowns takes that into account before a flight, not during one.

The practical answer is unremarkable: check what is active, keep the survey height sensible, watch the sky properly, and be prepared to hold. It is the same discipline any airspace check involves, and it is part of planning rather than something to think about on the day.

The parishes around this town hold historic houses with grounds, and the water in those grounds is often the interesting part: leats, weirs, ponds, mill channels and drainage that was laid out centuries ago and has been modified ever since.

From above the whole system reads as one thing, which it never does on foot. What the survey cannot do is see under the water or model its surface, so a capture of a mill pond gives you the banks, the structures and the extent on the day, with the water itself marked as a gap rather than invented.

The farmland here is gently rolling rather than steep, which makes it some of the most straightforward country on this list to survey. A single flight height serves a whole parcel, coverage is predictable, and detail stays even across the block.

The usual jobs are the ordinary ones: a whole holding recorded before a tenancy change, a parcel captured before development, drainage looked at after a wet winter, a set of buildings and yards put on file with a date attached.

The lanes around the town carry cob and thatch survivals, and those buildings appear in a land record whether or not they are the subject. Thatch in particular photographs well from above and badly from a gateway, so a holding record here regularly turns up as the first decent picture anyone has of a roof.

That is a by-product rather than an inspection. Anything needing a proper condition assessment gets pointed at the site in this group set up for building work rather than dressed up as part of a land survey.