Windy again at the coast, but a lot less windy than tomorrow, when we have a forecast of gale 8 to storm 10! It won’t be anywhere near that inland, but there are also brisk winds forecast for the Pyrenees, so we thought we’d better go out today.

We were delayed by urgent work, so didn’t to Santa Brigida until 3pm and watched a French guy take off and climb to approximately 1000′ ATO without a single turn. Despite having flown the site hundreds of times, we are always nervous the first flight of the season. The pre-flight nerves were not helped by Xevi turning up and telling us about an accident a friend of ours had had over the summer. I was desperate to get off the hill before he could elaborate more! The French guy came back to the ridge and got low. Being cyclic, I didn’t think there would be a problem once in the air, so I launched only to sink so fast I thought there was a problem with the glider. Geoff whipped me back up and Xevi had a short flight, but he did get above launch. Geoff had a go and got up, and I did too on my second flight. Nice beer in the landing field.

On reflection, we need to get our heads round the idea that we’ve actually arrived here much later in the season than usual, so going out late means we’ve lost the main part of the day. We need to acclimatise…

See photos of today.

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