My hobby is breeding and racing pigeons and I live on the south coast of England a few miles north of Portsmouth.
Most of the pigeon races start in France, where on the last part of their journey they have to cross over 100 miles of open sea. The furthest race in 2007 was from Pau which is some 519 miles from my lofts. They were released at 7.00am in the morning and my first bird back arrived at 8.41pm on the evening of the same day.