December 2010
Monthly Archive
Tuesday, 14th December 2010
Geoff writes: it was almost certainly flyable at Santa Brigida today (the very strong winds shown on the left are Tramuntana, and Santa Brigida works well in that), but in the end we decided not to bother, and stayed in to do some work, mostly on the never ending accounts (which, actually, are nearing the end). In the evening, Judith went to her parents to make Christmas biscuits, which turned out to be rock hard, and probably inedible. Still, it was the journey, rather than the arrival, which was important…
Monday, 13th December 2010
Geoff writes: after another couple of hours struggling with our accounts, we finally set off to Santa Brigida, where, given the ongoing tramuntana, we were pretty sure it would be ok. And so it was. I was first to launch, doing my worst launch for ages, but getting off ok. Very sloppy though. In the air, it was a fairly typical day, rough and broken at first – lumpy really – gradually getting smoother, with some OK height gains to be had, and able to push out in front, followed by smooth ridge soaring at the end of the day – followed, inevitably, by a beer in the landing field, provided by Johnny – who had had a great flight on his Zion, where “she really showed me her knickers” – not exactly sure what that means…
See photos of today.
Sunday, 12th December 2010
Geoff 13 Dec 2010 | : Beach, Trying, but failing, to fly
Geoff writes: a warmish, sunny day. The forecast was for north, with tramuntana coming in late afternoon/early evening. We decided to take a bit of a chance, and hope that we could fly off the north side of Sant Pere de Rodes before the strong winds arrived. Always nice to land on the beach. Nicky was here, so we had two cars. We left one by the south landing field as usual, and the wind was very light, as it had been all the way there. On arriving at the parking at the top, by the monastery, it was north, but still light. But by the time we had done the 20 minute walk right to the top, it had picked up a lot, and was way too windy to launch safely, especially off a spine back. The tramuntana had arrived much earlier than we expected. So we sat in the sun on the lee side for a while, then ambled down, and went off to the beach for a walk.
Got back home, had a nice meal and lots of cava. So could have been worse – didn’t fly, but had a nice walk in a fairly spectacular place, then a walk on the beach.
Saturday, 11th December 2010
The forecast was perfect for Santa Brigida again, until they changed it at 11.30am and decided the wind would be west, rather than north. We did toy with the idea of going to Bellmunt, but decided that there would be time to switch if necessary, so headed to Amer first. At Santa Brigida the wind was on, and there were lots of cars, so we stayed put. Lots of people that we haven’t seen since last year were there, and it was lovely to see Enric, Edu, Albert and Quini. Geoff was first off but it wasn’t that good, so he came in to top land. This triggered a collective parawait, until Edu took off and went down. Then Geoff had another go, went down; Marc had a bit of a fly around, but then went down, etc. In the end, everyone without a car on top flew down. The remaining few stragglers had a sunshine beer on top before driving down. A very sociable day, if rubbish for flying.
Friday, 10th December 2010
Good forecast for Santa Brigida today. Sunny, north at the coast and with the cold front going through yesterday, it was probably going to be unstable. We went out early-ish and were the first there. Jordi and Patri joined us soon after, bringing two and a half week old Oriol with them. Strange to hear tiny baby screams on a paragliding launch.
We had a nice fly. It was very thermic, although the thermals were not completely smooth to start with. We top landed to have a chat when John and Johnny arrived. All flew, but I decided it would do me good to have a ground handling session, so I did that for half and hour and then had what I assumed to be the end of the day flight along with John. I got really low and thought I’d have to bottom land, when I hooked a weak thermal and got back up. Very satisfying.
It wasn’t the last thermal of the day… John and Johnny did the same trick 20 minutes later, when they both got a low save too. At the real end of the day, Johnny flew down the new Niviuk Zion.
Thursday, 9th December 2010
Judith 10 Dec 2010 | : Boring stuff
We were quite optimistic about going flying today. Beautiful blue sky, lighter winds, etc. until we actually went to pack our stuff and get ready, when it rapidly clouded over and the forecast cold front appeared. It didn’t rain, but it was as if someone had dimmed the lights. Geoff was on a roll on the accounts and so we knuckled down and finished them. It’s a relief for us, although the amount of corporation tax we pay is hardly going to make a dent in the budget deficit. Anyway, enough of the boring stuff, hopefully we can get out and do/write about something marginally more interesting than work soon.
Wednesday, 8th December 2010
Judith 08 Dec 2010 | : Boring stuff
The wind seems to have followed us home, because it was howling here today. All the trees were a writhing mass, and the wind was so warm! I learnt a new Catalan word today: ‘fogony’. It literally means burner, but I assume that in the context of weather and wind it means föhn. I’ve never seen föhn forecast in our part of the Pyrenees, but it can certainly happen.
We were hoping to be able to take a few hours off to go flying, but with the strong wind it was clear from early on that that was a non-starter. On the positive side, we have ploughed through the accounts at such a pace that we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. No skiing tomorrow… forecast is far too warm and it’ll be far to slushy to be enjoyable. 22°C here today…