January 17th-20th, 2025
I arrived back in Spain mid afternoon on the 16th
and drove back to the marina at Linea de Concepción, right near Gibraltar,
where I stayed before heading to Morocco.
My motivation, restocking on British goodies. I walked over to Gibraltar’s Morrisons grocery
store for some ch-ch-ch…chips, chocolate & cheese!
The next morning I started to drive to Algodonales, a small town with
a population of around 5000, a few hours north and inland from the coast. It is known as one of the hot spots for
paragliding in Spain, if not the world, so I had to go and check it out, even
though the weather forecast didn’t look great for the next few days.
I drove along the coast for the first half of the journey
and then climbed a curvy mountainous road just beside the Sierras de las Nieves
National Park (nieve = snow).
Way in the distance is the Rock of Gibraltar...check the zoomed in photo after this one.
It was nice and sunny when I arrived in Algodonales, but
very windy, too windy for paragliding. I
needed to find the grocery store to buy a few things for lunch, so I started to
drive into town. I had seen on my
camping app that the town is notorious for narrow lanes and tight corners,
which I immediately found out was true. I
barely squeezed the campervan around one corner, after a car that turned onto my
road in the opposite direction had backed up to let me by. Wisely, I parked Octi as soon as I could on a
wider street on the edge of town and decided to walk.
One of many narrow streets in Algodonales.
Before hitting the store, I thought it would be wise to
wander around, check out the town but more importantly check out the 4-5
paragliding companies that I could see on Google Maps. Incredible.
That many schools in this little town?!?
Crazy.
The church in the main square was the tallest building in town.
The first place I walked by, Zero Gravity, had a storefront but was
closed. The next three addresses that I
passed by just looked like someone’s home, which I’m sure they were. Perhaps there is a paragliding business at
that location, it just wasn’t obvious and they were not operating today. The only other place that had a brick-and-mortar
place was a paragliding repair shop. Wow,
that really shows how busy this place can be for paragliding when there’s a
repair shop in town!
The view from the other side of town from where I parked...it is a lovely area.
Once I grabbed my groceries, I headed to the campground which
had quite the high-tech entry system.
There was a QR code to open a website to fill out your details and payment…yes,
I know, not groundbreaking…but what I thought was cool that I was then bounced
to a webpage, clicked a button, and the gate automatically opened for me.
The campground wasn't terribly busy.
I hid out in Octi for the rest of the windy day and the
following rainy day. I did send a
message to Zero Gravity via their website to see if they might be flying the following
day as the forecast looked much more promising.
Amazingly, I received a response just a few hours later from the main
instructor, Jose, and he told me to come to the shop the next morning at 10:30.
Octi on the first evening in Algodonales.
Entering the paragliding office, I first met Luisma, who I
later found out was the other instructor.
Jose owns the business, but Luisma has been teaching there for seven
years I believe. I also met a 59-year-old
English fellow named Adam who has been flying for 3-4 years. He learned with Zero Gravity and has since moved
to Algodonales and volunteers with them, helping with driving and some basic
coaching with students.
Speaking of students, Jose told me that they had one new
student who hadn’t done her first flight yet but had done a few days of
training. Julia, a young blonde woman,
was from the Lake Tahoe area, on the Nevada side. She later told me that she was a big skier
and mountain biker and quite the independent, confident person. I didn’t notice it until later, but she had
stunning eyes, one blue and one brown.
A former student, Alek, who learned with Zero Gravity about
3-4 months earlier had returned from his home in Ireland, although he’s
originally Polish, to get some more flights and training done.
The group of six of us hopped in the school’s van and
started a 25-minute drive to the day’s launch choice, a site called Montellano. Jose had told me that one reason that
Algodonales is so popular with paragliding is that they have 4-5 launches to
choose from, facing in different directions.
With the day’s forecast, he figured that Montellano, mainly a ridge
soaring site, would be our best option.
The launch was located on a ridge that was about 250 meters
above the valley. There was some old
looking astroturf near the edge which is always nice for keeping wings clean
and to avoid snagging lines on rocks or weeds.
The wind was too light to soar when we first arrived, so
Julia did some forward launching practice, starting back from the astroturf and
stopping before she reached the edge while Alek did a bit of ground handling. As we “parawaited”, some griffon vultures
cruised by, occasionally flapping. If
they have to flap, you know that it’s not on yet for us.
Jose working with Alek.
There were no other pilots when we first arrived, but during
the next couple of hours that we hung out, a number of vans showed up with
mainly German pilots it seemed. Soon the
wind picked up and the first “wind dummies” took off. The first one did end up landing below at the
LZ, but the next few guys were able to stay up.
Luisma took Julia on a few tandems for training, where she did a lot of the flying, just not the takeoff. Here they are, about to takeoff with Adam holding up their wing.
Eventually I decided it was time for me to fly. By this time there were probably about 15 wings in the sky, and later I couldn’t help but remark to Jose and Luisma that this would be considered a busy day in Canada, to which they replied that this was quiet for here.
Back in Canada, I mainly do thermal flying, where you rely
on hot air rising to climb up in the sky.
This site was more about ridge flying.
The wind hits the hill, it is deflected upwards and you sit in that lift
band. Ridge flying is more chill flying
than thermal flying and I enjoyed the change.
There was the odd light thermal that cruised up the hillside or was
popping off a bit away from the ridge which made it even more interesting.
About 10 minutes into my flight.
At times I had to keep my head on a swivel with lots of
traffic, but then I cruised to the far end of the ridge to the west and enjoyed
some open space. Then it was time to go
all the way to the other end, which must have been about 2 kilometres away.
By myself at the east end.
Just off the east end of the ridge, there was a small hill
with a castle on top of it. To reach it,
you had to fly over a bit of a gap where you would likely lose height since the
wind was not being deflected upwards. I
had watched Luisma and Julia in the tandem make it over and back while I was
near the launch, but I wasn’t sure whether to go for it or not. If I landed down below there, it might be a
while until Adam came to pick me up and I didn’t want to miss out on some
flying time.
Humming and hawing...should I go for it?
Yeah, it was easy...I think I lost all of 15 meters of height getting there. Sorry for the "Barney Rubble" with my thumb in the shot!
Coming back from the castle, I hopped the gap with no
problem and ridge soared this one section for a while to try and gain more
altitude before trying to head back to launch.
The wind had shifted about 45 degrees and now I would have a bigger section
to cross where I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t receive much lift.
Unfortunately, my suspicions were correct. I made it back to the launch area, but I was
halfway down the ridge. I put up a
battle, almost kicking some treetops, but ended up having to peel off and go to
the landing zone. I had hoped to top land
at the takeoff, which is what most of the pilots did…including Alek, who did his
first ever top landing!
Oh well, you win some, you lose some. I landed and kited my wing over to the road and
that’s when I heard my name. Turns out
that Jose had run into the same predicament and had landed about 10 minutes
before me. Now I didn’t feel so bad! Alek got a kick out of it…he top landed,
while two instructors didn’t make it.
Adam came and picked us up and we went back up to launch. Luisma and Julia went for one more tandem, but I had had enough. An hour later it was time to head back to Algodonales as it was already passed 5 pm. What a good day!
I returned the next morning to Zero Gravity, and Jose proposed
going to a different site due to different wind conditions. It was another ridge soaring site and he
figured it wouldn’t be flyable for a few hours, so he did a bit of classroom
work with Julia and Alek. I sat in on
the class which was great to hear a different instructor teach curriculum that
I teach. I learned a few different ways
to convey some theories.
The site wasn’t too far from a small city called Ronda and it was about the same
drivetime as yesterday. When we arrived,
it was definitely windier than yesterday, and a lot colder! Luisma pulled out a solo wing and took off to
test the conditions for the students. He
landed in the designated field off to the right and radioed his assessment back
to Jose. Julia was going to do her first
flight!
Julia ready to go.
Julia's takeoff.
Next Alek was up.
Alek's takeoff.
I had a nice flight…it’s always great to try a new site. I didn’t stay in the air for too long as it
was chilly, but I also wanted to top land and maybe takeoff again. Jose had briefed me and Alek about the
approach to take to avoid rotor from one section of the launch. Well, I didn’t go far enough over to the left
and did find myself in a bit of turbulent air, but I was able to manage it and
landed safely. Jose coached Alek on his
top landing, and it was much smoother.
During my flight.
The GoPro doesn't do it justice (it makes everything look small), but I had this griffon vulture fly close by.
The wind was picking up so we headed off for some lunch in a
nearby town called Setenil, hoping to return afterwards to lighter winds. Well, this restaurant was super slow. I was under the impression that the Spaniards
like to “make a meal out of a meal” but even Jose and Luisma were complaining
that it took too long.
Almost two hours later, we headed back to the site, but the
wind had gained in strength. Luisma took
off, once again to check the air, and almost immediately he radioed that it was
not good for the students. It was even
colder than earlier so I had no desire to fly either. Luisma landed down below and when we picked him
up, he said that the air was turbulent and not fun.
Instead, even though it was approaching 4 o’clock already,
we headed to a small hill for Julia to practice some forward launching and Alek
was going to do some reverse ground handling.
I decided to pull out my wing and practice some cobra launching, which I
don’t often get to do back in Canada as we don’t often get consistent, strong
wind like here.
What a beautiful spot to ground handle!
It was a fun session.
I had a few little flights, used the wing to pull me up the hillside and
just enjoyed mucking around. Speaking of
muck, the hill was fallow and had been plowed and was relatively hard mud, but
it had some clay in it, so it was super sticky on the boots.
Jose, Luisma and Julia walking back to the van while Alek packs up.
We arrived back in Algodonales after 6 pm, all happy, but tired. The forecast looked rainy for the next 2-3
days so I said my good-byes to everyone and wished them the best…it was a fun
few days!
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