October 2010
Monthly Archive
Sunday, 17th October 2010
Judith 18 Oct 2010 | : Holiday, Trying, but failing, to fly
We woke up to sunshine! The daily mist cycle in Ager was finally broken… by strong winds. The forecast said NW winds, but with strong sunshine it can come on, so we had breakfast and then headed up the hill. The N wind was much lighter than we anticipated, but it was really cold, so we sat in the car a while and then headed to the lower launch, where it was more on, but with the N wind still clearly in evidence, we didn’t think it was safe to fly. Hunger drove us back down to camping, where we played meccano, putting Nicky’s new tilting bike rack together. By 3pm we figured that if it wasn’t on now, it never would be, so we drove back up the hill, but it was still N. We checked out the N launch over the back of the hill, but it was too strong for comfort, so we gave up and said our goodbyes to Nicky and headed off home via a bit of sightseeing.
Although I have driven through Balaguer many, many times, I have never stopped to see the old town walls. Geoff has and said it was worth it. I don’t think much of the new town with endless apartment blocks, but the main square is lovely. From there we walked up the hill and to the entrance of the stepped walkway along the town walls, but it was locked. Fairly typically for round here, all the things tourists (or locals) might want to see are closed when people are actually free to see them. So you can’t see any thing during siesta times and the walls close at 2pm on a Sunday in winter. Arrgghh! We did wander around trying to find a nice place for a picnic and noticed one of the gates onto the walls hadn’t been locked, so we sneaked in for a short walk round.
Next stop Montfalco Murallat, a little medieval walled village that we haven’t been to for many years. Like Weston-super-Mare, it’s still not quite finished.
Saturday, 16th October 2010
Geoff writes: after the disappointment of yesterday, today looked like it was going to be the same. We got up late – the wine – and it was even cloudier than yesterday, with the fog reaching ground level. Judith and Nicky went for breakfast whilst I stayed in the van and sulked. Eventually, I went to join them, sort of, and did some more work in the bar, whilst they went off for a walk.
But after they got back, it started to break up, though the top ridge was still mostly in cloud. But we went up, as soon as I could drag them away from chatting, and people were starting to fly as we were driving up. It turned out to be a really exceptional day, with the clouds below us, above us, at the side, but plenty of blue in between, so much of the flight, we were flying up the side of clouds. With the clouds, and the stunning scenery, it was an amazing flight. Judith eventually landed, she was cold, but I carried on flying, eventually choosing to go to land at the camping. She had managed to finally see her reflection in the glory (the circular halo) on the cloud. This is pretty rare, and she had never seen it before – but today, she saw it four times.
Nicky had driven for us, still feeling a little ill, so when she came back down, Judith took her up for an evening flight. The cloud had come in a bit more, and it took a while for her to get off, waiting for it to clear, but eventually she did.
All in all, a really nice day.
Friday, 15th October 2010
Geoff 16 Oct 2010 | : Trying, but failing, to fly, Work
Geoff writes: as we set off for Ager, it was cloudy, but breaking up – and the forecast was still excellent. As we drove towards Vic, it got cloudier and stayed that way for a long time. But then started to clear, it looked like it would be a good day. Then, about 30km from Ager, it got cloudy again. At Ager you couldn’t see the ridge. And it stayed that way for most of the day. I sat in the bar at the camping, and worked. The sun eventually came out about 5.30pm. We went up, and the wind was over the back. And that was that. Went out for a meal with Nicky, drank too much wine, went to bed. An incredibly disappointing day (Nicky asked me to point out the disappointment was with the weather, not the meal with her ….).
Thursday, 14th October 2010
Long meeting this morning and it was cloudy (again!). We finished at 1.30pm and headed out because we could really do with a day out. When we got to Santa Brigida, it was still cloudy and most of the surrounding higher hills were clagged in. When we got up the hill it seemed fine, but then dropped to nothing. Geoff did an extended top to bottom and I picked him up. In the meantime the sun came out and as soon as it did, it got very thermic.
On our third flight the clouds had separated into two layers and in the lower layer the clouds kept coming and they just kept working. If they had been higher than 2800′ AMSL it would have been an epic XC day. It did get a little rough at times though.
The Niviuk HQ is only 10 minutes down the road and they had a window put into the side of their building, so they can see Santa Brigida. Seeing us flying, Xiliu came out to test a Peak II. Shame he didn’t have long, because it just got better and better. We actually had trouble getting down to top land.
We had a break and then decided that we should probably not spin it out to the very end, since we are off to Ager tomorrow, so we could do with a few more hours of work, but it seemed daft both of us driving down. Geoff took the evening flight honours. Lovely buoyant conditions.
Wednesday, 13th October 2010
A rain free day! Still very cloudy and Meteocat promised howling winds, so we didn’t think it would be flyable. In the end there wasn’t actually any wind at all, so we didn’t think it was worth going as we didn’t think we could stay up. Ho hum.
We did go out for a wander round Besalu to see what improvements they have made over the summer. We tried to explore some of the bits we’ve not seen before and tried to get up to the restored church, but it’s in a private garden and you can’t get there. We did discover a hill top outdoor swimming pool called ‘Vista de Basalu’ and it really is a pool with a hell of a view!
Otherwise it was more work. I’m in mega marketing mode, trying to plug the November conference. But there was some light relief too. I’ve been spending the time looking at Anita Hafdís Björnsdóttir’s videos of the practice day and the crazy dancing at the Women’s Open in Ager. Happy days… can’t wait to see the full vids.
Tuesday, 12th October 2010
Judith 13 Oct 2010 | : Boring stuff, Walking
Ok, so we seem to be having the worst weather in Europe. But at least we have kind friends who keep us up to date with how nice it is in the UK and who helpfully point out that we left too soon and should have stuck around longer.
After a night of hard rain, it actually stopped at 11am and brightened up a touch. Not enough to go flying (even if it had got flyable, our gliders would have got soaked and muddy), but we decided to go for a walk instead. We did the ’round the cliff’ walk to check out how much water there is in the river and to check out the damage caused by the deluge. Quite a few trees have come down, but nothing like a few years ago when the water level nearly came to the bottom of the cliff and flooded the allotments on the other bank.
In the hope of finding an agreeable forecast, I had a hunt around the internet trying to suss out when the next non-work day would be. I’ve decided to abandon the local RASP, which had this as the local forecast for today:
Complete and utter codswallop! Berga was marked as yellow, with a high thermal updraft strength. Except the webcam showed the mountains behind Berga were clagged in most of the day. And you can see why:
The only really accurate forecast was the synoptic:
And here’s some actual photos from our village. Thermals? My arse!
Monday, 11th October 2010
Judith 11 Oct 2010 | : Miscellaneous activities, Work
The rain today reached biblical proportions. We no longer have a river outside the house, but a torrent. You can’t see the weirs any more and the river is about sixteen times the width it normally is. It’s not reached the bottom of the cliff yet, but if it rains hard tonight and tomorrow, it might yet.
So some work and then another lunch with my parents. Geoff only does restaurant lunch once a year, so he didn’t come and missed profiteroles to die for.
I went to the post office in Olot on the way. Going to the post office is something of a saga in our village. It’s only open weekdays until 10am. We used to lovingly call it the post hovel, because it was just a hole in the wall. Our local postie only delivers once a week and he’s the most disorganised public official I’ve ever seen. His desk is so full of junk that it normally takes him ages to locate the scales to weigh our letters. He never has change and often has to either ask other customers or pay us in stamps – when he has any. He usually runs out, so has to take our letters to Olot. It’s actually rather charming. With the rain this morning, I couldn’t face walking to the post office but going to Olot felt like sneaking off for an illicit liaison – I hope the postie doesn’t find out we went elsewhere.
Later in the afternoon we watched Blue Peter and finally saw the epidsode we watched being filmed on the Mynd with Judy Leden and the peregrine falcon. We even saw ourselves in it, but blink and you miss us. It’s available to view online for a week.