November 2009
Monthly Archive
Thursday, 12th November 2009
Judith 12 Nov 2009 | : Trying, but failing, to fly
You’ll never guess what happened today? Yep, got it in one…
So we wake up to a forecast of sun, sun, sun and south wind. Perfect for going somewhere other than Santa Brigida. Like, just for a change of scenery. So we arrange with Oriol to go to El Mont, which is forecast to be in sun and it’s south facing. What could go wrong? Here’s the forecast:
Just to make sure, I checked a couple other sources. Like the synoptic… (and just in case you think there’s a warm front to our west, which was bound to cause some high cloud… that was at least 400 miles away, stalled and fizzling out, according to the subsequent 12am synoptic chart).
And the sat pic, which was a little more true:
It started clouding over with high stuff from 11am. Not good for El Mont and a guaranteed fly-down. Then Geoff got some urgent work, so we had to ditch plan B, which was Sant Pere de Rodes as we didn’t know what time we would be able to get there. So plan C was trusty old Santa Brigida (what we used to laughably call a magic mountain). By the time we left home the sky was overcast with thick stratus. No bother, a soaring flight at least. And what happened when we got to Santa Brigida? Strong, gusty NW wind. No sun. On the drive home the sky was full of wave. Again.
So we’ve driven out to fly at Santa Brigida four times in a row and done nothing. What a waste of time! Maybe Geoff should reconsider his aversion to golf.
Wednesday, 11th November 2009
Judith 12 Nov 2009 | : Trying, but failing, to fly
Complete repeat of yesterday, just with more anticipation before and more sulking after. A sunny sandwich at the Co-operativa in Les Preses made up for some of it though.
Edit on the 12/11/09:
Ok, I was still in a sulk when I wrote that. Now I’m suicidal, but more on that later…
It was a really lovely morning but it clouded over really fast. Roger arrived at Santa Brigida before us and reported strong west wind, so we were all for canning the day and going to Banyoles to walk around the lake. As we were getting our boots on, Roger phoned again to say the wind had dropped and it was coming on. Not having flown for a few days and being keen sorts, we dashed out, but it was getting cloudier as we approached. As we were driving to the car park next to the bottom landing, we could see Roger soaring the ridge. However, the flag on the monastery was NW (and it’s a SE hill). He came down after a five minute flight. First thing I asked him was “when you were flying over the monastery, did you think ‘hmmmm it’s NW”? Roger confirmed he thought exactly that and a lot of extra stuff I can’t write in case there are sensitive types reading.
On the way home, there was a big blue hole over the Val d’en Bas, so that’s where we had our sandwich, looking at Puig Sacalm (biggest rock in the area of Olot), which was showing itself from its pretty side.
Tuesday, 10th November 2009
Judith 10 Nov 2009 | : Trying, but failing, to fly
The weather forecasting is getting very tiresome. The Catalan forecast gave the warm front as coming through this evening. I should have listened to the Met Office. It was nice and sunny when we got up, and we arranged to meet Roger at Santa Brigida. By the time we got there the front had arrived and the launch was clouded over. All this wouldn’t have been a problem if the promised strong winds had materialised and we could have had a soaring flight at least. As it was, it was nil wind.
We stood around, had lunch, chatted. We then tried to film some online conference trailers which include paragliding. As it is, we ended up with lots of out-takes and none of the footage we need.
Roger did a heroic nil-wind forward launch fly down, but that was it for flying. Ho hum.
Monday, 9th November 2009
We had our usual Monday morning catch-up meeting with the JISC team, and once we finished it was clear that it was way too windy to do anything sporty outdoors. Instead, we went to Besalu (its main square is sheltered from the northerly wind) for a sandwich and a bask in the sun.
All day there were wacky wave clouds to entertain us. I am used to them being fairly static, but these ones moved and squirmed, to make weird patterns in the air. I didn’t get a photo of the best ones, which is a shame.
Sunday, 8th November 2009
Good weather in Scotland usually means bad weather here and so it was. It didn’t rain, but there was a lot of cloud and wind about. After our aborted trip to Santa Brigida yesterday, it looked even less promising today, so we decided to do a days work. We did pop out onto the balcony sporadically to check if it wasn’t worth rushing out after all, but there were a lot of interesting wave formations about and these confirmed our decision.
The exciting thing today was spotting that Kamira Pereira has broken the women’s world record. Anja Kroll is in Quixadá, Brazil and reported it live on her blog, as she was watching Kamira through her Spot tracker. It’s amazing to think we can be sitting here, knowing someone somewhere on the other side of the world has just crossed the previous world record mark and is still going, with still some time left in the day.
Saturday, 7th November 2009
Judith 07 Nov 2009 | : Trying, but failing, to fly, Work
What a pain today was. It started out alright (i.e. sunny), but then went somewhat downhill. First sound we heard this morning, was a buzzing noise. We’d completely forgotten that the annual Besalu paramotoring festival was supposed to be on this weekend. It’s been postponed to next week due to a bad forecast, but a few people obviously turned up anyway. I had mentioned to Xiliu last week that this year I hoped they would buzz our cliff, as my photos last year were crap. Right enough, four guys flew in front, over and around our house.
The forecast took a turn for the worse with possible thunderstorms after lunchtime, so we wrote the day off to do work. By 11am we were congratulating ourselves on a decision well made, since it had clouded over completely. By noon it was beautiful blue sky with little cumulus everywhere. Arrrggghhh!
The sat pic showed us in a blue hole and the webcams showed it blue to the west and north of us too. We raced out to Santa Brigida, but of course, by the time we got there (45 mins later) the sky was overcast again and the wind was NW. We didn’t even get out of the van, but turned back straight away. It started spitting near Castellfollit and by the time we had the kettle on back at home, the sky had turned a deep grey. It got so dark the floodlighting for the cliff came on. 10 mins later the thunderstorms started. We got a great view of the spectacle from the roof terrace – lightening, thunder, hail, the lot. The landscape was temporarily turned into a winter wonderland, there was so much hail on the ground.
Still, more time to complete work and get the LMSC autumn newsletter ready, which should be sent out tomorrow.
Friday, 6th November 2009
The forecast was for sunny weather, but NW again, so another non-Berga day. We’d really like to go somewhere else while the weather is warm, but the wind is thwarting us each sunny day. The only place where it’s feasible to fly is the magic mountain, Santa Brigida. We arranged to meet Nani there and he came with Xevi. The four of us went up and the conditions were very good. Cumulus everywhere and every cloud working.
It was a little bouncy in places and if we had been in the mood we could have easily gone XC. As it was, we struggled to get down to top land and have lunch, but then we flew off and on again for the rest of the day. I tried a different launch technique, but was dumped on my butt like I used to before As and Cs, so will stop experimenting. A whole car full of French guys arrived, reporting cloudy and strong NW conditions in the mountains across the border and they were thrilled to get some nice flying. Even some local guys turned up – very unusual on a working day in autumn.