Judith's blog

We decided to have a day off and head to the seaside. Towels, buckets and spades packed we headed for Barmouth, whilst the hang gliding comp went to Clatter and a few locals went to the Long Mynd. It was the hottest day of the year so far and swimming in the sea was gorgeous. It clouded over for about an hour, but we didn’t get a chance to grumble about it, because some of our time was taken up dealing with issues around the mid-air between two hang gliders at Clatter. Thankfully, one is being released from hospital today, the other is more injured, but not life-threatening. The task was cancelled as a result of the accident.

Once the sun came back out, we indulged ourselves in ice cream, a walk and building balancing stone sculptures. We left once the wind got stronger and it got a bit chillier and went to the HG comp HQ to see friends, and get the latest news.

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We have been looking forward to a day at the beach for ages. The forecast was for hot and sunny weather, but breezy. We were all set for a paddle and a frolic on the beach when we got an email from John through the Parapent Girona list saying ‘how about Sant Pere de Rodes today?’. Oriol agreed, and who are we to argue? Geoff’s got a new glider to fly, I love Sant Pere de Rodes and we could always fly to the beach or go there after flying.

We noticed the breeze as we got closer, but it was only as Geoff was ground handling the wing in the landing field that we really noticed the wind pick up. We all decided it wasn’t worth the drive up and agreed to meet again at 3.30pm, if the wind had dropped. So Oriol went off to kite surf, John went back to work and we got our bucket and spade and went to the sea side!

Once out of the wind (which was howling) it was hot, so we played at being gambas for a while. That’s what the Spanish call British tourists – it means prawns, i.e. always pink. Then we went for a walk round the bay to the port, which is the best place to see fish. We only got to see the really big ones because it was choppy. By 3pm it hadn’t calmed down and the wind seemed NE, so we just stayed in Roses, read our books and chilled out for the day. Bliss.

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Geoff writes: a day of sun, sea, sand and snow – unfortunately, all in the same place.

As promised the day was very sunny after the blizzards of yesterday, and the snow is already melting here. We decided to go to fly, and got to Santa Brigida, where the wind, and sky, was perfect. The only problem was that the slowly melting snow was gradually turning both the bottom landing and the bottom parking into a lake, rather than a field. We started to drive up, but even the paved bit was extremely slippy, even with the 4×4; also, we were a bit dubious about laying out gliders – especially the demo Artik 2 – in melting snow, with mud underneath. We decided not to bother, and went on a couple of km to the Niviuk HQ, to ask if we could keep the Artik 2 for another week, since we’re off skiing and flying tomorrow, and Judith wants to fly it. Fortunately, they said yes.

There wasn’t much snow at La Cellera, so we decided to go to the beach, at Blanes, a place we have never been to. But it quickly became apparent that we had wildly underestimated the chaos the snow had caused. As soon as we left La Cellera, there was a lot more snow on the ground, and as we got closer to the coast, we passed literally dozens of cars that had just been abandoned, and lost count of those that had skidded completely off the road, into ditches, etc. The trip was slow because we were stopped every now and again whilst cars and lorries were being dragged out of the way, and the snow ploughs were cursing drivers who had abandoned their cars, and not come back the next day to pick them up, making it really difficult to clear the roads.

Blanes was sunny, there was sea, and sand – and also snow, and big waves on the Mediterranean. It has a nice beach, but the rest of the place is a typically over-developed coastal resort, and a bit of a dump. We walked for an hour or so, and dodged the waves, so it was fun, but we’ll never go again – likewise for Lloret de Mar, a few km up the coast – nice beach, awful town.

By this time the cloud had come in, and it was getting a bit chilly, so we decided to drive home. Going back via Girona, we noticed there weren’t many lights on – and then heard on the radio that the entire city was without electricity. We then saw why – a number of collapsed electricity pylons had pulled down the cables.

As we reached home, the sun came out again – it had been out all day here – and the snow is almost gone, so here at least it is back to normal, i.e. the snow is where it should be, in the mountains. Which is where we will be tomorrow.

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Geoff writes: an interesting day (for us, if not for other people), with a mixture of work, flying and conflict with the paramilitary police.

The work is doing the final edit on a web cast/multimedia site guide. We’ve been thinking about doing web casts for a while, for topics which need more than just the audio available in the podcasts (e.g. weather, RASP), so decided to produce multimedia descriptions of LMSC sites. The first one, a kind of experiment, is now finished. It can be seen here.

For the flying, on what was a warm, sunny day, we went to Sant Pere de Rodes, the nice spineback ridge by the coast. As well as Nani, Jesus and Johnny, various Niviuk test pilots and designers turned up to fly, including Dominique (the Niviuk MD), Urban and Aljaz Valic (test pilots), Olivier Neff (designer), Simon Issenhuth and others. They came to this part of Spain because everywhere else in Europe has bad weather (except maybe Britain last week!). They had a couple of carbon wings with them, still under development, and it was interesting to see these. Incredible performance. We all launched off the south side first – not epic, but most people stayed up for a while and got above launch, in spite of some high cloud coming in. Eventually, all bottom landed.

We all went up again, and flew off the north side. I was first off, and soared a bit, then went to land in the car park by the beach, where we always land in a northerly. The others all landed there too. As we were packing up, drinking beers and discussing which bar to go to, a Guardia Civil car drove past, did a U-turn, and came into the car park. For those who don’t know much about Spain, the Guardia Civil were the paramilitary police force which, after the civil war ended in victory for the Fascists, were used to violently oppress those areas which had opposed Franco – which included Catalunya. They aren’t as vicious as they used to be, in the new democratic Spain, but you wouldn’t want to get on their wrong side. And, clearly, they have switched from fighting the Spanish resistance, to oppressing paraglider pilots, who they said shouldn’t be landing in that car park (which has been used for years). Maybe they were just bored. All the pilots at this point were foreigners – us, French, Swiss, Slovenian, etc., not one Catalan or Spaniard, though that would have made no difference to their attitude. Dominique, to his credit, started arguing with them, whilst they were collecting everyone’s identity card, and checking them to make sure we were all legal.

We decided to play the stupid English tourists who speak no Spanish, and gradually crept off to the van, whilst they were arguing with Dominique, hoping they wouldn’t notice us. We got as far as the van, but when we started the engine, they shouted at us to stop, so we did. They had guns.

In the end, it all came to nothing – they gave everyone their ID back, and eventually went off, after Dominique told them we’d be flying again there tomorrow. It wasted maybe an hour of our time, and was a staggering display of arrogance, and completely pointless. And hardly a good advert for a country which wants more tourists to rescue an economy which is an even worse shape than Britain’s. (Mind you, as far as I know, you can still take photos in Spain without being arrested, which certainly isn’t the case in Britain. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2010/feb/21/police-arrest-photographer for another display of pointless harassment, this time in the UK, where every photographer is now treated as a potential terrorist).

So, all in all, an interesting and, mostly, enjoyable day! And the forecast is very good for the next week or two.

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Today may be the last hot (27C) and sunny day and although Geoff was keen to go flying, we had no playmates and I didn’t want to go to Santa Brigida (we’ll be spending plenty of time there in the depth of winter). I’ve been wanting to go snorkeling for weeks and today was the day. We headed off to the bay near Roses and climbed down the path laden with gear – canoe, snorkeling stuff, books, towels, picnic, etc. To our amazement, there were lots of people there. Normally when we go there it’s deserted. We pumped up the canoe and I paddled out to the island off the shore and across to the cove. It was brilliant being out on the sea. I paddled back and gave Geoff a go while I got my snorkel and went to look at the fish. I saw about 11 different varieties. Mostly saddled bream, black tailed wrasse, cow bream and rainbow wrasse. The water was lovely and warm enough even for Geoff to go in and stay in for a good snorkel about.

We dried off lying about on the shore reading our books and then went in for another go. We’ve discovered we can use the canoe as a two-man job by me lying on the front, so Geoff paddled me around the bay while I sunbathed.

I had a quick look at the blog for this day last year. What a contrast!

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Another hot and sunny day, we were a bit undecided about where to go. Berga was off and we left it a bit late to post a message on the Parapent Girona mailing list to coax other people out. We also want to spend the hot weather doing things we can’t do the rest of the winter, i.e. do stuff  in water. The plan was to go to our favourite snorkeling bay near Roses, but there was persistent sea fog at the coast. The forecast said it would burn off, but by 12 noon it hadn’t so we went to the gorge at Sadernes instead with the inflatable canoe we have borrowed from Wayne. We want to check it out on calm waters and on the sea before buying some for ourselves.

It was great fun, paddling around the little lake and upstream (not that that’s very far). It was so hot I went swimming several times to cool off.

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My folks came back from a week’s holiday in rainy and grey Ireland visiting my sister and niece, so I picked them up from the airport and then Geoff and I rushed off to Palau-Saverdera to fly. We met up with Nani, Enric, Oriol and Jesus and headed up to Sant Pere de Rodes. It looked very, very stable and the inversion was solid. It was so hazy you could barely see the sea. No one was really optimistic until we got to launch and there was wind. A soaring flight at least!

Mathias came bounding up behind us and dashed off (he’d come for a lunch break flight) and he maintained, so we all followed him off. I briefly got above launch, but didn’t head along the ridge with Jesus, who landed near Roses. We boated about for a little while, getting lower, but I found a weak house thermal over the church and worked it in a lazy fashion, gaining some height, losing it again and then thermalling up to launch height again. Most of us ended in the bottom landing, where, for some inexplicable reason, there is now a giant shopping trolley (but no river for it to be abandoned in).

It was such a hot and sunny day that we were keen to get to the beach and try the inflatable canoe Wayne has lent us, but the sea was a little choppy, so I just went swimming. Then sunbathing with beer. Life’s good…

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