Trying, but failing, to fly
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Wednesday, 26th November 2008
Posted by Judith on 26 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly
Cold but sunny today. So cold that the hosepipe on the balcony had an icicle hanging from it. Forecast looked suitable for Coma Negra, so we met Joan and Xevi in the village and headed out.
When we got to the landing field the farmer had filled it with cows and removed the wind sock. This wouldn’t do at all, so the lads set out to construct a new one, made of a branch, a plastic bag a copious amounts of masking tape (all this required the use of a pocket knife – it was that technical!). Then we had to decide where to site it… Where better than up a telegraph pole? They climbed up, dodging the live electricity and telephone lines and weaving it into the wires and then fixing it in place with loads more masking tape. Job done we headed up. Unfortunately it was off to the west and not flyable.
They decided to head off to Santa Brigida (where it almost certainly was flyable), as it is on Xevi’s way home. We went home and did long overdue jobs.
Saturday, 25th October 2008
Posted by Judith on 26 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Party, party, party..., Trying, but failing, to fly
It was a beautiful hot day, but unfortunately there was also a strong north wind. We debated whether to go to Puig d’Afrou, but decided to just try Santa Brigida instead. It was over the back there and gusty, so we had a picnic and read our books in the sun. It was probably flyable later at Puig d’Afrou, but by 5pm, we were lazy from the sun and couldn’t be bothered with the drive. Instead, we set off for the main fiesta of the year in Girona. We originally thought this was next week, but Nils our street performer/hang gliding buddy confirmed otherwise. We got there just in time to miss his first show, but saw the next one. We’ve seen it 4 times before, but it’s such a great show it’s worth seeing again and again. The finale of the show is Nils on a 3 meter unicylce juggling knives or fire.
We hung out at the fair for a while and looked at stalls waiting for the correfoc to start. Correfoc means running with fire in Catalan, and that’s a bit of a misnomer. The streets are so narrow you don’t run anywhere – more skip, dance and generally try not to get singed is a more accurate description. You go dressed for a correfoc in old clothes, and most essentially a hat or hoodie, if you don’t want your hair to catch fire.
A correfoc is basically a procession of drummers, the general public and a load of guys (and gals) dressed as devils and dragons who have fireworks on sticks which they light and swing over your head. At other correfocs we’ve been to you dance in a great huddle with the devils and the closer you are to them the less likely you are to get burned. Not in Girona. They chased us with fireworks held to the ground so you had to do a kind of skipping dance to avoid getting you socks burned, whilst above your head sparks were flying. All this takes place in streets too narrow for cars to pass through them and there are hundreds of people. The noise, smoke, bangs and sparks are amazing. It’s completely anarchic. I was squealing with delight most of the time.
Tuesday, 21st October 2008
Posted by Judith on 21 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly
We opened the conference today, so lots of work this morning. There is a two week reading period and by this afternoon everything had quietened down so we went out for a couple of hours.
The sky was great, although a little windy again. We were not sure if Santa Brigida would work, but on approaching it we could see Sergi high above the monastery. We gave Carles a lift up and he launched and went up vertically. It had already been picking up and by the time I was ready it was gusty and off to the east. The other guys landed fairly soon after. It was top-end and I wasn’t confident that it wouldn’t pick up more, so I elected not to fly. Geoff did the same.
Sunday, 5th October 2008
Posted by Judith on 05 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly
We seem to be losing it a little with the forecast…
They predicted hot and sunny conditions with southerly winds on the Catalan forecast so we decided to hook up with Nicky and Tim again, and fly Puig d’Afrou in the morning, have lunch and then fly at Santa Brigida in the afternoon. It’s the standard plan for a weekend flying day round these parts. As we drove through Amer, there was no wind but as we got to La Cellera we could see the trees moving. There is a huge mound of earth and rubble in the landing field, but at least it was nice and calm. Nicky was being interviewed by an Irish radio station and they’d flown in a journalist specially, so she went off to Santa Brigida and we would meet her there later.
We had a coffee and by the time we went outside again it was gusty with a strong wind from the north west. Everyone else was equally clueless as to why this should be. We decided to check out the conditions at Santa Brigida (it’s not a magic mountain for nothing), but there it had aslo picked up and was howling. We all went to see Marc’s new house with a view of Puig d’Afrou and then went home to do some work, because stupidly we hadn’t thought a Plan B was necessary today and hadn’t packed our swimming suits, buckets and spades.
Off to dinner in Rupit tonight.
Saturday, 4th October 2008
Posted by Judith on 04 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly
We got up early this morning to drive to Berga to hook up with Nicky to do some flying. Berga is another place where we have a checkered history. Lots of trips, little flying.
The landing field was full of paramotors and we realised that they had a comp on. We met Nicky and Tim, the honorary Icelander, and headed up the hill. The forecast was for south winds. Perfect. When we got out of the car if was blowing strong N. Hmmm… On launch the thermals were sometimes bringing it on, but most of the time it was decidedly off. Nicky knows the area really, really well and said it was very strange conditions. We decided to go for lunch when a series of dust devils came through (in October!).
As we were driving past the Primera Maria launch we decided to have a look, just so we could learn more about the area. Enric was there and it was lovely to see him. On the Primera Maria (only about 1km from the Segunda) it was smack on with no northerly wind. It was pretty sinky, but Tim launched and went up a little, but then had to bottom land. Enric launched a short while after, but struggled to maintain. After about 15 minutes he and another pilot got a thermal and crossed onto the higher ridge behind. We rushed to get our gliders ready but the guy in front of me couldn’t take off because of paramotors soaring back and forth in front of launch. Once he got off the wind picked up. Big style. 5mph to 25mph in 2 minutes. I backed off because the wind had also obviously picked up in the bottom landing field. Nicky and Tim came back to take off and reported strong N in the car park and very strong winds in the bottom. The paramotor task was a ‘stay in the air as long as you can’ task and two guys stuck it out for as long as they could. It provided us with a lot of entertainment, seeing them getting tossed about in the howling winds. In the end it became a strongest bladder competition instead.
It was a strange day indeed. We canned it at 4pm and headed down. We bumped into Enric later who said he had got 2600m AMSL (8530 feet).
We don’t really need to learn this lesson again, but you should never, ever go to a site and not get your wing out, as you won’t be ready when it does get good. On the other hand, I always get some ‘new site’ apprehension, especially when you get contradictory winds, dust devils and sudden picking up of the wind. I don’t regret not flying, and am quite glad I wasn’t in the air 5 minutes after I would have launched, but I should have got ready.
We drove home and found that there was an international festival of witches going on in St Joan les Fonts, the next village. We stopped and saw a procession of giant witches and devils as well as women and little cute child witches. There were loads of hippy stalls and even a stall where you could get your aura cleaned. I tried to persuade Geoff, but he reckons his aura might be a little frayed at the edges, but not in need of a spruce up yet!
Friday, 3rd October 2008
Posted by Judith on 03 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly
There is always a period of adjustment when we change countries. We need to do what the Spanish call ‘change the chip’. One of the things which always takes a few days is to re-learn to interpret the forecast. In the UK it’s invariably worse than the forecast. Here it is almost always better. Even on a bad forecast, there is some part of the day, or some place where it is flyable. The same happened today. The forecast was for rain. There were a few spits this morning, but then the sun came out and it was lovely. I checked the 11.30am update and they were forecasting strong winds at the coast (perfect for Santa Brigida), but big cloud development in that area.
Geoff is still not 100%, and I decided too late that I wanted to go out and fly. By the time we got to Santa Brigida the clouds were already looking ominous and were causing gusts on launch. Had we been there an hour or two before it would have been a nice day. We read our books for a while, had a beer and a snooze. As we set off down the hill we could hear claps of thunder and see sheets of rain in the distance.
At home, it was a cloudless sky. What a difference 14 miles can make!
Tuesday, 30th September 2008
Posted by Judith on 01 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: France, Holiday, Trying, but failing, to fly
After only 4 hours sleep in the front seats of the van we arrived in Millau with a view of flying. We have a somewhat poor history of flying there, because for the past 7 years we have been driving through Millau twice a year, but only managed to fly there for the first time last year and that was only because we refused to leave the UK until there was a passable forecast there. We were rewarded with two days of nice flying then. It was not a feat we would repeat this year.
The forecast we looked at on Saturday was was good for Monday. We stopped to buy some lunch in the supermarket and saw people launching, so we headed up, thinking they were doing top-to-bottoms because it was so light. Wrong. On top it was howling and people were flying out to get away from the ridge. Within 15 minutes of us being on top it was completely blown out, although a tandem launched and one brave soul followed him. He flew out and the spiralled down pretty much straight away. Everyone else drove down.
Geoff didn’t have the energy to rig the hang glider, so we decided to do some tourist stuff. We drove to the Cirque de Navacelles, a huge crater with a stunning little village in the bottom. A walk and snooze in the sun later, we headed home to Spain.