I was chatting to my uncle Bruce last night while I was imbibing some rather lovely Bavarian wheat beer. Despite his predictions, I wasn’t too hungover to do anything today. So there!

The forecast was rubbish. Cloudy, some rain at the coast and progressively getting worse as the cold front came nearer. I was all prepared for a day’s work, but the 11.30am forecast gave it even worse for the next two days, so we decided to give it a go on the off-chance. Plan A was to go flying, and if that didn’t work, we would go up to Rupit, and have a nice walk. I had to do some urgent conference work, but we set off at one o’clock.

As we were driving towards Amer, I thought we might as well turn round. It looked so gloomy and the tops of the hills were clagged in cloud. However, the wind seemed to be on, so we carried on. Despite cars in the parking there was no one in the air, but we headed up anyway. As we neared the top, Xiliu popped up above us and started climbing out in a thermal. Geoff put his foot down and we arrived to find Enric, Joan, Quim and Adria all ready to launch. Enric was first there and said it had been really good at 1pm, but now the wind was dropping. Xiliu said it was really unstable.

Joan and Adria sacrificed themselves to the soaring gods and as soon as they touched down it got really, really good. Geoff launched, followed by Xiliu, and got a nice thermal. It gradually got better and better. Big, smooth thermals on the ridge and out in the valley. Enric went for a heroic glide to the end of the next ridge and I couldn’t believe he would make it back. He thermalled back up from just above the bottom landing and made it back in on top.

We flew all afternoon and Joan Borrell (one of the three Joans who were there today) was still doing touch and goes at 4.30pm. Amazingly good for a day that we nearly wrote off and which was overcast nearly all the time. Thermic most of the day, and still ridge lift at the end. You can never write off Santa Brigida. Even Xiliu – one of the Niviuk founders – was impressed with the day!

We’re doing ok for the fun/work ratio so far this January. In the last two weeks we’ve skied 5 times, flown 5 times and worked 4 days (actually, we’ve worked more than 4, but on the other days we fitted it around the fun activities). It’s been flyable 10 days out of the last 14… not bad for the depth of winter.

See photos of today.

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