January 2009
Monthly Archive
Friday, 30th January 2009
Judith 31 Jan 2009 | : Boring stuff
Third day of the conference. We’ve been working from 7am to 1am each day and are exhausted. We were really looking forward to the local flying/eating/Catalan culture festival held at/on Santa Brigida on Sunday, but it’s just been cancelled due to rain. Monday we wanted to go to Andorra, skiing, but it looks like more bad weather, so we probably won’t go. We always have a post conference treat away from the computers, but it looks like this year we’ll just go for lunch. Depending on the restaurant, that can take as long as a mini-break.
Thursday, 29th January 2009
Geoff 29 Jan 2009 | : Boring stuff
Second day of the conference, lots of work, and a beautiful, warm, sunny day. However, the closer we get to the conference finishing, the worse the weather forecast!
Wednesday, 28th January 2009
Geoff 28 Jan 2009 | : Boring stuff
Geoff writes: our latest Supporting Deaf People online conference opened today. 218 participants, 17 countries, many delegates who have participated in past conferences in the SDP series, which shows that they are well-received and popular. Always busy, always fun (so not really right to tag this as ‘boring stuff’), and always a lot of hard work, the four days of the conference being the culmination of months of planning.
As always, the conference coincides with good weather! Today looked eminently flyable and skiable. But we are chained to the computers.
Tuesday, 27th January 2009
Our last day before the conference opens for posting. We have a lot of work this evening, including phone meetings and final preparations, so we decided to spend at least part of the day out, given that we won’t move from the house now until it closes on Sunday morning. Since La Molina is more or less back to normal following the power cuts there, we went skiing. The power may be restored, but the wind was back (the first time we’ve been blown up a slope on the skis), and progressively throughout the morning more and more lifts were closed. Most of the pistes which were open were covered in wind-blown snow, and the skiing was difficult at first. But we found a couple of pistes where the snow was blowing off as fast as it was blowing on, and skied there for a while. The wind began to drop too, so lifts began to re-open. In the end we had a really nice day, cutting it a bit short because we had to get back home to begin work.
The SDP conferences are always fun; but always stressful too! Fortunately, Judith has bought a good supply of chocolate and alcohol.
Monday, 26th January 2009
The forecast for today was good for Santa Brigida – strong in most of the country, tramuntana, but light and variable inland. And sunny.
So it was a bit of a disappointment when we got up and found 100% cloud cover, and it stayed like that most of the day. We checked the various web cams and wind directions, and it was north or north west everywhere. Finally, about 2.30 pm we wrote off the day. I checked the wind direction at Angles one last time, and found it had switched to south east. Off we rushed, to find it north west at Santa Brigida. We still drove up, read a bit, the sun came out, the wind came on, and we finally flew. It was pleasant evening flying for an hour or so. As often happens mid-week, we were the only people there.
We had actually planned to go skiing today, but the La Molina (and Masella) resorts were mostly closed because of a lack of electricity, which still has not been fully restored following the storm on Saturday. Only a few pistes were open, mostly greens. Still, tomorrow more is open, the last day before the conference opens, so we’ll probably be skiing, with a bit of luck!
Sunday, 25th January 2009
Judith 25 Jan 2009 | : Trying, but failing, to fly
After the wind yesterday, it was eerily calm this morning. The forecast was for south winds, strongish, but not impossible. We set off for Santa Brigida to go flying, but as we got to Olot it was howling and west. We called Marc who confirmed that it was light in Angles, so we carried on. It’s not unusual to find it strong in Olot but flyable at Santa Brigida. When we got to Amer it was bending the trees double and Marc was nowhere to be seen!
We didn’t want to take the risk of driving to the coast where it would probably be even more windy, so we went up to the Susqueda dam. There is was really howling and it picked up whilst we were there to about 65 – 75mph. We’ve never seen whitecaps on a reservoir before. Whilst walking across the dam you would be stopped dead in your tracks when a gust came through. We were holding on to our glasses for fear that they would be blown over the railings.
On getting home, we found that the wind had been fine at the coast. Damn!
Saturday, 24th January 2009
Judith 24 Jan 2009 | : Boring stuff
There is a severe weather warning for the whole of the French Pyrenees (Atlantic to Med) and the north of Spain due to very strong winds. We seem to be a little sheltered here, although I did get up at 3am to bring the washing in from the roof terrace. I didn’t fancy Geoff’s undies being distributed all over Garrotxa. What struck me as I was standing outside in the middle of the night was how incredibly warm it was.
Today the winds have been strengthening and the top gust measured in Port Bou at the coast was a staggering 173km/h. They have basically closed the ski resort of La Molina and Nicky is blocked in her village as all the roads are closed due to falling trees. Turns out we got away lightly here in Castellfollit. It was the worst storm in 10 years.