Felix flying at Santa Brigida.We closed the conference down at 8.30am and we emerged into the sun like a couple of squirrels after a long hibernation. It felt like that anyway. The forecast wasn’t quite as good as it had beenĀ but the key thing was to get out of the house (in the end, it was warm and sunny after all).

On the way out we could see lots of cloud and wind so went for the easy option: Santa Brigida. Despite the wind in the landing field it was light on top, so I took off and the conditions were ‘interesting’. Where you expected lift (and could see wind in the trees) there wasn’t any and where you didn’t expect it, you got hoicked into the air. It was very thermic and quite rough in places. We rarely fly at Santa Brigida when there is cumulus, but it started to form out in the valley, so I flew out and connected with a nice 2.6m/s thermal which took me up to cloud base. I flew out into the blue to stay out of the cloud and stayed in the lift band and flew some way up the side of it.

Geoff was lower and found it quite rough, so we both top landed. We’re so tired from the conference that we both snoozed for half an hour until Felix arrived and we all flew again. Conditions were smoother and you couldn’t get as high but you couldn’t get down either. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast and I tried several times to top land, but always ended up 200 feet higher than when I started my approach. Eventually I could barely hear my vario over the noise of my grumbling stomach, so I decided to bottom land, and Geoff could pick me up on the way to the snack bar. I eventually got to 300′ below take off, and hit yet another thermal, so admitted defeat, thermalled back up and top landed.

Lighting flares to guide in the paramotors.Hunger sated, we headed for Besalu and the paramotor festival. We bumped into lots of friends we had notĀ  seen since arriving in Spain, including Vincent and Carles. The first paramotor arrived at 6.45pm and the spectacle started at 7pm, with fireworks. It must have been amazing for the guys to see the fireworks from above, with the river and the bridge below. Ramon Morillas did some acro and although they did not have permission to fly below 40m of the top of the bridge, they flew within feet of it. The closest buzzed us about 10′ above our heads, to great cheers and applause from the crowds. Health and safety? This is Spain!

See photos of today.