The forecast was for hot and sunny weather, and light winds, all of which happened. We were going to go to Puig d’Afrou with Nicky, but she couldn’t make it, so we decided to go to Belmunt instead. We don’t often go there, because of the endless windy road to get there. We’ll go more when we return in Autumn, when the new tunnel is open, which will shave about 30 minutes off the journey.

There were no cumulus clouds on the way and when we got to the top there were two HG pilots, but not a PG soul around. We assessed the conditions for a while and it seemed good. As we were sitting in the sun, a couple of PG guys arrived and got ready. One launched and got low, but the two HGs launched and the three of them got high together. We got ready fast and I got off, flew to the end of the launch gully, hit a thermal and climbed to 1000′ ATO, where I hit the inversion layer. It was really rough. I flew off along the ridge, but hit loads of sink. I choose not to scratch too close to the trees and black rocks deliberately (unlike Geoff) and spotted three vultures in a thermal in the valley. I headed there only to clip the thermal and see them then fly off. Some more scratching had me down in the landing field, while Geoff’s ridge hugging did the trick and he got high.

I flagged down a passing hang glider and got the car, retrieved Geoff after his flight, had lunch in the sun and we went back up so I could fly again. I assumed that at 4.30pm it would have smoothed off and there might be some restitution about, however, I launched, got to 900′ ATO and hit the inversion where it was bloody rough. It hadn’t changed a lot. Lots of active flying involved. After half an hour I decided to fly down – my heart wasn’t in it today.

Geoff writes: surprisingly rough and thermic. At ridge height the thermals were not well formed, just blobs coming off the rocks. Like Judith, I got to the inversion level and found it very rough, so stayed lower. No real chance of an XC. Finally, I had quite a big blowout, spun a little, lost some height, but it recovered nicely. But I decided to land. Too much excitement!

See photos of today.