Geoff over Santa Brigida.What a day! The forecast was rubbish, so although we woke to clearing skies, we bid farewell to Richard, who headed up to Perepertuse in France. Meteocat got it spectacularly wrong. By 12pm the sky was fantastic and I could not concentrate on my work any more. We headed for Santa Brigida, where we met up with Marc and a guy on holiday from Mexico, called Gerardo. It was very thermic, in the sense that there was strong lift and strong sink and both Geoff and I went on a jolly to the bottom landing, whilst a guy from France went on a nice little out-and-return.

On getting back up we had another flight and both top landed. We were sunbathing, when two tourists came to the launch and started looking around. Two minutes later we heard a big crunch – the unmistakeable sound of a paraglider hitting trees. It was Gerardo, who’d never flown the site before. I and the two tourists ran to the edge and started to shout to check if he was ok. He shouted back to say he was fine, but Marc could see him from the air and said he was hanging in the tree. By an amazing coincidence, the two tourists were tree surgeons who had just been to a national tree rescue competition and had seen us flying so came up to have a look. They went to their van to get their gear and got his canopy out of the tree in what must be record time.

We all went back to launch and people immediately started to unknot the glider so he could get straight back on the horse. There was no way they were going to let him not fly again.

Geoff was first to launch again (at 4pm) and he immediately sunk out. I was on launch behind him, but took my harness off in readiness for picking him up from the bottom landing. I should have had more faith… He got the second lowest save of his flying career, and skyed out! I wish I had stayed in my gear! I launched as soon as I was ready again, and Santa Brigida did its usual evening magic… big thermals, easy lift in between. Perfect boating about condition. I got to 750′ ATO at 5pm in a wide, smooth thermal and it allowed me to see the beach and the Pyrenees at the same time. Beers in the landing field, and I managed to make a joke in Catalan. I must be picking it up!

See photos of today.

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