January 2011
Monthly Archive
Sunday, 30th January 2011
Judith 31 Jan 2011 | : Trying, but failing, to fly
Turns out that the flying conditions at Santa Brigida yesterday were really good. Big, smooth thermals and lots of sky to play with. It didn’t rain until the early evening. A phone call to Marc confirmed that people were already flying at Santa Brigida this morning. I had to take my parents to the airport at mid-day, so instead of Geoff going off on his own and my meeting him there, we went all together in one car.
The sky towards the mountains wasn’t stunning and when we got to Amer, we could see all the pilots sitting in the bar, rather than on the hill. We drove to the landing anyway, but it started spitting soon after. Since the forecast was for deteriorating conditions, we headed home, into some serious rain.
We spent a lovely evening at Debi’s, who cooked us her signature dish of rabbit and meatballs. Delicious.
Saturday, 29th January 2011
Judith 29 Jan 2011 | : Miscellaneous activities
We woke up this morning expecting to hear the noise of rain. A quick look out of the window showed big blue bits in the sky. The weather just got nicer and nicer and we even considered going flying at Bellmunt, but decided to have a look at the updated forecast. The sat pic showed a big blue hole over us that would move by afternoon and the synoptic didn’t seem to match the sat pic. Come 11.30am we were eagerly awaiting the Meteocat update, when they rolled back the web site and treated us to Wednesday’s forecast. It stayed like that for an hour, until we just decided to not chance flying (it was probably snowed up or muddy anyway) and go to Girona instead.
The sky was certainly mixed when we left the house. Beautiful blue sky to the north and south, wave to the east and black clouds to the west. At the Girona turn-off we had a brain wave to go to Figueres instead. Since they built the by-pass we haven’t been to the town centre, so it’s been years since we were last there. Most of the towns here have really been spruced up in the last few years, so we decided to have a look to see if this was the case in Figueres too.
The town is mostly famous as the birth place of Dalí and contains the huge Dalí Theatre-Museum. The whole town is very arty – lots of public scultpures and paintings, as well as sculptures on the roundabouts. It has improved a lot. We had a pleasant look around and when the sky clouded over and we got cold, we went for a slap up lunch. We arrived back at the car just as the rain started.
Friday, 28th January 2011
Judith 28 Jan 2011 | : Boring stuff
A miserable day. Wet, cold, dank. We worked. Not much else to do…
Thursday, 27th January 2011
Judith 27 Jan 2011 | : Boring stuff, Work
Brrrr! It’s cold.
We were supposed to go skiing today, but the forecast front came in early and they were predicting sporadic snow above 400m. We’re fair weather skiers, and couldn’t be bothered with the cloud and lumpy snow, never mind possibly having to mess around with snow chains on the way home. Instead we got on with some overdue work. It was grey here and there was some rain – the first since the 23rd of December. We’ve had the heating on all day, which is pretty unusual.
Worse weather tomorrow. We may even get some snow here.
Wednesday, 26th January 2011
Geoff writes: we had considered going skiing today, because the forecast is getting much poorer towards the end of the week. But it improved slightly for tomorrow, so decided to go skiing tomorrow instead, and today walk, work or fly. Oriol suggest Bellmunt, so we did some work then met him and Dai (who in spite of his name is Catalan) at the bottom. It was very hazy, inverted, and very blue. We went up, sat around for a while, and then Judith launched first. She maintained, then quickly got up, and we all followed. A bit weak at first, it gradually got stronger, with some very strong thermals. It also got rougher.
Judith followed some birds into the valley, they flew off and she got a bit low, so went to land. The rest of us managed to get up again. After an hour or so, it was cold, it was getting bumpier, so I went to land too, followed by the others.
Good spring flying though. When Judith landed, she impressed one of the local residents, who was shocked to see a woman flying, the first time she had ever seen one.
We ended up with a nice beer in the bar, then back home for our club committee meeting tonight (which we attend via Skype).
Tuesday, 25th January 2011
Skiing today with our friend Debi. We got to Masella at a reasonable time and hit the slopes at 10.15am. Debbi was working in the afternoon, so we only had 5 hours at the resort. With the cold temperatures they have made loads of new snow and we skied basically all of the 50km that is open. Snow quality was excellent – best so far this season.
Nice and sunny day too. Nice to be out.
Monday, 24th January 2011
We were hoping for a change of scenery, but the north wind was still blowing strongly in France, so Ceret was out. Instead we agreed to meet Mike at Santa Brigida. We were late leaving home due to conference work and when getting close, could already see two gliders high up.
It was lighter than yesterday and the day before and Geoff and Mike nearly went down before they both got a low save and then both got over 1000 feet ATO. I mislaid a glove and had to unpack everything until I found it and then I nearly went down as well. I got a weak thermal that meant I had to do ovals, not circles, so as to avoid hitting the monastery, but I got up eventually. I climbed to about 800′ ATO and then played around until we all got low again. It took all my skill and perseverance to get back up, but I did. Very satisfying. I celebrated by top landing and having a rest.
Geoff flew again later and barely got above launch and it looked like it was just ridge lift. Geoff said as much when he top landed, but Mike and I then promptly got over 1000′ again and punched through the inversion. Geoff joined us and the three of us had a nice fly around before tea, biscuits, beer and cashews in the fading sunshine.