Last month, a group of Territorial Army soldiers from Oxfordshire flew out to Afghanistan.

The men and women, based at the Slade Park Barracks, in Headington, Oxford, joined 140 troops from Battalion 7 Rifles now based in troubled Helmand province.

Throughout the course of their six-month tour of duty, the soldiers will be telling us about life on the front line of the war on terror - and sharing their hopes and aspirations, - as well as their thoughts of family, friends and work colleagues back in Oxfordshire.

In the first of a series of reports, Lt Jon Dolphin tells us about the unit's flight from RAF Brize Norton and their first impressions of arriving in the danger zone 01.10.07 THIS is the first post of what will hopefully be a continuous running log of what the Salonika' Company soldiers have been getting up to in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

I'm writing this first part from a hangar in Turkey where we've stopped off to refuel.

This morning was a bit of a rude awakening as we had to get up at 1am to catch a coach to RAF Brize Norton.

For the last couple of months, we've been based in barracks in Pirbright, Surrey, so it took a couple of hours to make the journey.

This was the first military flight for many, and to be honest, it was no different to catching a normal flight to go on holiday.

Everything was the same; check-in, baggage checks, metal detectors and quite a long time spent looking at a clock in the waiting room. The only difference was that the check-in girls were all wearing combats!

The RAF Police are pretty thorough and, just like civilian airports, they even took nail scissors off us. I thought that was a little unnecessary considering we were all trained infantry soldiers. At one point, I thought Duffy was going to get strip searched. Lucky for all of us that he didn't!

We flew out on a C17, a massive cargo plane with some seating, which is based at Brize. The inside of the aircraft is big enough to have a basketball court or a decent five-a-side game. Unfortunately they wouldn't let us try. Being a cargo plane, there was a lot of space for us to stretch out and most of us got our heads down and had a sleep.

The first part of the flight to Turkey lasted about four hours. After two hours on the ground while the crew changed over, we set off on the second leg which was to take another four and-a-half hours to the city of Kandahar.

02.10.07 We landed in Kandahar at just gone midnight.

After an arrival brief and a quick trip to the mess hall to get some food, we were all keen to get our heads down and grab a few hours sleep.

The airfield was pretty dark when we got there so we didn't get a proper look at our surroundings until morning.

We awoke to a bright sunny day. Outside of our temporary accommodation, we stepped into a scene which could have been the backdrop to any news report on the Afghan war. The dusty grey of the ground seemed to merge into the early morning haze as we found ourselves among the hangars, buildings and blast proof walls of Kandahar Airfield.

After a full breakfast in a well-stocked canteen, we were checked through into the departure lounge for Camp Bastion.

Camp Bastion would become our home for the next six months.

This lounge had a TV and so we sat back, tried to relax and watched the weather reports for the UK on BBC News 24. Although we were thousands of miles away from our families, it was strangely satisfying to see rain forecast for the UK while we were enjoying the sunshine - albeit in a war zone.

The next leg of our journey was by C130, the Hercules, which is the workhorse of the RAF. Forty minutes after take-off, we were touching down on a slightly bumpier landing strip outside Camp Bastion.

Like components in a well oiled machine, we were escorted to transit accommodation where we will stay for the next two days to complete our induction to theatre training.

After a long couple of days travelling, we were given the rest of the day off to wander around camp, getting to know the place.

If our first sight of Kandahar airfield had been a surprise, our first impression of Camp Bastion was 10 times as surreal.

After three months of training, having seen pictures of the place, we were now in the picture.

We had been catapulted from the green of Surrey into the middle of a barren, featureless desert. More to follow soon...