Judith's blog

We went flying at Santa Brigida. The forecast was for hot and sunny weather, but we we woke up a grey mucky sky. Plans to go flying at Puig d’Afrou went out of the window when we heard it was clagged in. Back to Santa Brigida…

There were loads of people there doing top-to-bottoms to get their paragliding licence and we chewed the fat in the landing field for a while.

Nani, Geoff and I went up whilst everyone else went off to sit the theory exam. It was very light, but Geoff launched first and went straight up. Nani and I launched next and it was very thermic despite being overcast. The sky started breaking up, the sun came out and the conditions changed to big lift/sink thermals, so I landed for a bit of a breather. Nani got a great low save and I decided it looked xc-able, so re-launched only to sink out and go down (again!). Geoff kindly picked me up and I was determined to make the most of the day.

I launched and got to 1300′ ATO in rough and broken thermals. On the ground the wind had changed and neither Nani nor Geoff were able to launch. At altitude it was blowing WNW and I made the decision that flying to Olot was probably not going to be easy. The drift was taking me towards the valley behind Roca Corba so I went slightly cross wind so I could fly along the cliff to the east of Santa Brigida and cross the gap into Sant Gregori. This was all a brilliant plan, had I not got intimidated by the shear spreadout of trees and the distance to any landable field. Had the climbs been more organised and stronger, I would have dropped onto the cliff, but I chickened out and chose to follow thermals which would take me from one potential landing field to the next.

I passed St. Climent de Amer and hit lots of sink. I decided to land next to Can Puig where they were having a BBQ and I could see the wind direction from the smoke. The wind was shifting around in all directions and I hit a strong valley wind as I was descending. Landing at Can Puig was no longer an option as I was drifting to fast. I ended up landing at the lowest point of the valley in a tiny, crappy stubble area.

I was just bunching up my glider when two huge Alsatians came bounding up to me barking and growling. Luckily their owner appeared within a few seconds and told me all about watching my flight over his house, my rapid descent and how he had been waving to me like mad the whole time. He was more excited about the whole thing than I was! He offered to drive me to anywhere I needed to be, gave me water and insisted on helping me across a little brook by offering me his arm. A real gentleman!

The vehicle he had was a combat coloured converted open top golf cart thing with a motor bike engine and we chugged back to Can Puig scaring all the local wild life with the roaring engine. Geoff met me there and we had a picnic in the sun before going back to Santa Brigida for some more flying. Loads of others turned up as well and because of the hot and sunny weather and it had a real fiesta feel to it. Everyone was smiling and basking in the heat. Roll on summer!

See photos of today.

See my flight tracklog.

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