Judith's blog

Geoff writes: after all the events of the last week, an excellent day. It was both the day of the Long Mynd Soaring Club social, the Big Bash; and a round of the British Clubs Challenge, an inter club competition.

The PG part of the comp was at Corndon, the HG at the Malverns. Great sky at Corndon, but strongish wind. In the end, most people flew and many got away, with the best distance being around 45k, I think, by Dave Thomas. Judith and I didn’t fly, partly because we both hate the combination of strong wind and thermals; partly because it was our first day at Corndon since Sunday. However, everyone who did fly did so without incident, apart from one tree landing, and one person who got dragged onto a barbed wire fence. No injuries though, apart from to the gliders. So it was a good day for the comp. Not sure which club won at this stage.

The evening was the Bash at the Powis Arms, the event Judith and Michaela have been preparing for ages. Around 70 people turned up, which was excellent. Food, drink, prizes, music. Prize winners included Kai Coleman and Jason Smith (longest XC from Mynd site, highest placed National League pilot, PG and HG respectively), Ellie Hoskins (best new PG pilot), Andrew Donnison (weather guru and coach of the year), Richard Chaffe (unsung hero award), Judith (most improved PG pilot, highest placed female league pilot, from the Mynd, outstanding contribution to the club) and me (highest placed PG league newcomer, bent metal trophy). A full list of award winners will be on the Mynd forum.

I’m probably a bit biased, but I thought it was a really good night out, and an excellent event all round.

See photos of the flying today.

See Paul’s photos of flying today.

See Paul’s photos of tonight.

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We stayed overnight, to see if it was possible to get another flight in France, but it was not to be. Targasonne is impassable and the wind was forecast to pick up in Cerdanya, and on arrival at Ceret it was clear it was already blown out. We didn’t want to sit around waiting, so we headed to the beach.

We’ve never been to the coast immediately north of the Spanish border, but had heard nice things about the villages, so we headed to Collioure. It’s stunning. An old port with beautiful old buildings and a nice relaxed atmosphere. Everyone seems to either run a restaurant or an art gallery and the houses are painted nice colours and have lots of arty touches. We sat around in the sun, making the most of our last day before the packing and cleaning frenzy starts tomorrow.

Next stop was Banyuls, which isn’t as nice. Lots of modern buildings and more of a resort feel. We had our lunch there, but it was so windy that we jumped back into the car to continue our tour.

We didn’t bother stopping at Port Bou, just across the border in Spain. It is completely dominated by the railway and its buildings. Franco decided to make the gauge for Spanish trains different to French ones so that it would be impossible to invade by rail. This means having to change trains at the border, and Port Bou is the last stop in Spain. I have bad memories of having to change trains in Irun at 2am when I went inter-railing as a teenager, so we skipped the trainspotting opportunity.

The next village is Colera, and although I’ve always wanted to go there, its name does it justice. Another place to drive past with a clear conscience…

See photos of today.

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Big discussion on what to do this morning… lots of options. People were going to El Mont and we talked to Nicky about going back to Berga, but couldn’t face the drive two days in a row (so we are going tomorrow instead). In the end we went for the lazy option and went to the beach and then flying.

When we got to Roses, there was a cold on-shore breeze, and being east, there is no shelter. Reading in the sun wasn’t much fun, so we went for an amble to the end of the bay to look at the fish. When we got to the marina, the place was full of army vehicles and people getting into wet suits. They were the least likely looking army blokes, most of them looked as if they spent more time in the mess hall than on the training ground. Some where also a little old and one was bearded! There was a lot of groaning and stretching going on as they squeezed bits of themselves into neoprene. Then came the helmets (amazingly, since the words ‘health’ and ‘safety’ are never used in the same sentence here), so by this time we had forgotten about the fish and were intrigued to see what they might be up to. They lined up in pairs and then staggered (they seemed to think it was jogging, but you could have fooled me) about 30m to the edge of the marina. I expected a manly jump into the water, but they sat down and carefully lowered themselves into the water! After 1 minute the instructor got out of the water and then helped the rest out by pulling people back up whilst two or three others would push the more portly ones up.

Throughout this spectacle, Geoff and I were discussing if they could really be in the army and what the UME logo on their wet suits could possibly stand for. Turns out they were the Military Emergency Unit. But trust me, you’d only call them if the emergency involved running out of sticky tape or you needed a light bulb changing.

We headed up to Sant Pere de Rodes at 3pm to see if I could get a fly. Although it was east at the coast, and the forecast was south for the day, it was actually north when we got to the launch. It promptly dropped to nothing as I was getting ready and then started switching from one side of the hill to the other. The wind then played musical take off with me while I carried my gear from one take off to the other in the heat. At 5pm a dust devil came through and Geoff jumped on the glider while I tried to pull the lines in quick. In the end I had enough and decided pack up and carry down.

The day ended with us having a beer watching the sunset over the bay at Port de la Selva. I’ll miss that view when we leave in 10 days.

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It was windy today, so we headed out to La Cellera to return Roger’s phone which Geoff accidentally took away with him yesterday. As it wasn’t flyable we went to Can Co, a restaurant owned by Sergi, paraglider pilot and president of the Puig d’Afrou club. I got my free lunch for winning the PG world championship sweepstake and we had some cava-type beer, double fermented, which was actually really nice and which went surprisingly well with fish.

Afterwards the three of us set off to Santa Brigida to clear up after the Chilean (the one who crashed into a tree yesterday, decided to leave his glider there and fly back today to Chile). It was stuck up a high tree and Roger and Geoff had to climb up  the dead limbs (some of which were breaking as they stepped on them) to get to the canopy. It was a crappy old thing. 10 years old and looked so worn that you wouldn’t use it for ground handling, never mind getting into the air with it. (According to the Niviuk guys, the poor state of the glider, and its porosity, were the main reason he spun it into the trees, rather than only bad piloting). It was in such an awkward place that we had to cut the lines to get the sail out and before chucking it into the nearest bin. The glider was damaged as we got it out, and we put a few more cuts into it in case anyone saw it in the bin and thought it was safe to fly!

Catalunya (the part where we live) is a really nice part of Spain, and has mostly avoided a lot of the trashing and over development other parts of Spain suffer from. It’s a real shame when pilots come from somewhere else and just dump unwanted stuff here, for others to clear up.

It was still howling at 4pm, so we decided just to can the day and went home to do jobs.

See photos of today.

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What to do on the way to Andorra? We decided to go and try to fly on the way. Nicky was up for going flying and we decided that Berga would be worth a go – although no guarantees. As we left home, we could see medium-sized wave bars forming. Hmmm. As we got closer to Ripoll, the wave bars had become massive. Seven layer blob wave mixed in with traditional lenticulars, it all looked very impressive, but not very flyable. Nicky phoned to say that the wave as in Berga as well, according to the webcam, but we decided to go anyway, as you never know and it’s always nice to catch up with Nicky.

When we got there the wind was west and the clouds were scooting over the launch from the NE. We waited around and chatted in the landing field, when we heard loud shouting and music from above. A local pilot, Jordi, had waited for a cycle and got off. We went up with him again, but the wind was north at the 2nd Maria. We went to the 1st Maria and it was on, but light, so Jordi flew home and Geoff got ready. He’s tried, but failed, to fly Berga so many times because of bad weather/wrong wind direction, that even a top-to-bottom seemed a good idea, just to break his bad luck streak for the place. As he was on launch the wind dropped and went east, so he tried a running reverse launch. He got the wing up, ran to the edge and literally jumped in the air. He landed on a shelf two meters below. Nicky and I nearly wet ourselves laughing.

That was it for flying. I suppose you could argue that he has now popped his Berga cherry… 0.5 seconds flying and a TTB of 2 meters. Stick that in your logbook, Geoff!

See photos of today.

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The big news from this morning is that I won the Parapente Girona PG world championship sweepstake! I picked Andi Aeby, so I am four bottles of good wine, a dinner at Can Co and a crate of beer better off. Yippee!

The forecast was very inconclusive. There were weather warnings for strong NW winds and snow; but it could also work out as sunny and light winds, depending on where you were. What was an issue was over-development, but then again… depends on how localised, close together, etc.

We ummmed and aaahed for a bit and decided to wait and see, so Michaela and I went to the tree house/labyrinth at Argelaguer. As we walked in, we met the constructor and it was really interesting talking to him, especially when I said that I had been many years ago. He’s keen to build the maze and tree houses, rather than towers. He assured me that there were seven of them before, rather than just the five that I remembered. Michaela loved it! He’s expanded the labyrinth even in the two weeks since we went and the owner told us about bits that we hadn’t seen before, so Michaela and I went down a steep bank, via three tree houses, to a little bridge to a place I didn’t even think was his land. Amazing what you can miss.

As we were in the maze the sky was just incredible. Cumulus to die for, but it seemed to be picking up. By the time we had climbed the highest tower it was definitely over-developing. However, ever hopeful, we went to Santa Brigida, thinking that it might stay blue there.

When we got to Amer, it was south. It would have been absolutely perfect, had it not been for the cu-nimbs surrounding us. We waited for a while, and the blue hole around us closed in and we admitted defeat when we heard thunder near and then above us.

Michaela and I then went to Olot to procure the prizes for the LMSC awards (our lips are sealed!). Since neither of us are habitual shoppers, it was a real novelty fun experience, enhanced by cake!

See photos of today.

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The forecast was for wind and rain, but it was a nice blue day to start with. The bad weather was coming in from the west, so we had some time to get a flight in. The concern became the wind, after we saw the updated forecast. Sure enough, on our drive out to Amer evidence of very strong winds became more and more obvious, so we turned back and worked instead. It was probably flyable later on when we picked up Michaela from the airport, who is here until Tuesday morning. Tomorrow, skiing, and forecast looks ok for flying at the weekend. And skiing again Monday. That’s the plan….

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