I awoke early, well early for me, not having worked for six months...it was 7:45am! I got on the road a little after 9 and planned to head for Laragne, a place I had visited with the Brits back at the end of June where I flew my longest cross country flight so far of the summer. Sadly I arrived just five minutes too late as I saw the navette (shuttle van) pass by me as I entered town. I continued on to the campsite but there was no one else heading up to launch. It was noticeably quieter here than in June. I weighed my options and decided to press on the two hour drive to St. Hillaire as one can take the funiculaire to get up to launch so being solo wouldn’t be an issue. The weather was similar to the last couple of days in St. Andre so I definitely wanted to get into the air.
The drive was quite pleasant, although Miss SatNav did take me on one or two interesting routes. Arriving near the landing zone, I checked out the parking for the funiculaire but it was full so I pressed on the 7-800 meters to the LZ. Before I even stopped, Alex waved at the site of Betty and me pulling in. We shook hands and I met Nick, a Brit who just did a paramotoring course with Alex in the past week in Organya, Spain. We decided to head up to launch in Betty. I dropped the guys with their wings at a restaurant while I parked near the launch. I made a quick baguette sandwich (gosh I love French bread!) and headed to the big astro-turfed take-off.
A rocky canyon en route to Digne Les Bains:
Looking towards the Sisteron fortress (that I visited back in June):
Gorgeous mountain views
SatNav special:
The wind was blowing a bit over the back (not good to launch in) so I sat for a bit to watch the wings in the air and the few that were setup on launch ready to go. The puffy yet dark cumulus clouds eventually let the sun poke through and some thermic cycles began to puff through. A few solo and a few tandems took off so I tried my luck but botched my forward launch with the wing fading off to the left. I got ready again and on my next attempt the wing was above my head but I didn’t feel any loading (it wasn’t trying to lift me off my feet) so I decided to abort as it’s a bit of a drop after the astro-turf. It turned out to be fortunate that I didn’t take off on my third attempt as my iPod had fallen out of my flight deck and a nice old man returned it to me...that would have fallen nicely into the” bad things” category. I finally flew into the air, probably close to 35 minutes after setting up and I received a bit of an applause from the 60 some people hanging out watching. Hmm...maybe I should do some botched attempts all the time as no one else I saw launch got an applause!
I climbed in a thermal filled with wings, both paragliders and hang gliders, above me. Eventually I decided to head south along the ridge although it had been shaded for quite some time and I didn’t expect to find lift there...and I didn’t. I returned to the launch area, about 200 meters below the ridgeline and fought for a good 20-25 minutes, got up to 85 meters below but then faded again. The sun was starting to descend in the sky and this east facing ridge just wasn’t getting the thermal heat it needed to take me up. I did a big spiral over the landing zone (trying to get rid of some of the Dune de Pyla sand in my wing) and then was happy when I spot landed on the center dot. I packed up and then walked to the funiculaire as I didn’t see Betty in the parking lot and Nick’s car was gone so I assumed that Betty was still up top.
The funiculaire ride, my first time on it, was pretty cool. A bit slow but faster than when we hiked up in June. I was amazed looking at all of the stairs that we had climbed, especially through the tunnel where low voltage lines were giving us the occasional buzzing sensation.
I drove Betty down and headed to the campsite. Alex and the others weren’t there so I just parked Betty in a good spot and now I’m typing to ya. Another good day Wandergliding.
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