Day Trip to Gréolières

I'm spoiled for flying and have become embarrassingly lazy about it. If I cut out hike and flies, all my flights last year except one were from St Andre. I've pretty much stopped driving to go and fly; instead I just hike up the hill and fly. If conditions aren't good locally, I do something else rather than drive to a different site. 

I've become a one site pilot, and that's a pity because there are a lot of really good sites nearby. Today, the meteo wind was NE; maybe the anabatic and valley winds would have overcome it at St Andre but I wasn't sure. Instead I joined a whole bunch of Nice pilots at Greolieres - a whole hour away in the car. 

Greolieres is an interesting and (in a different way to St Andre) somewhat intimidating place to fly. It's on the S side of a big W-E ridge, in a steep sided valley (more like a rocky gorge) leading to Nice and the Med. The general meteo wind is N, and launch is a long way below ridge top, so you're often flying in the lee, using a mixture of thermals and the anabatic 'breeze' to stay up. The LZ is at the school in Greolieres, which is little village perched roughly half-way up the slope. The normal launch is only 200m above the LZ, so margins are tight and you can't afford to screw around at the start of your flight. 

In light conditions you have to soar near the slope and wait for a thermal to get some terrain clearance. Things were relatively straightforward today; once you got a 100 meters above launch, thermals were pretty much sufficient to stay up and you could preserve decent terrain clearance. I played it safe and flew for just over an hour in some very spring like thermals - bumpy and small. I stayed below the top of the ridge and - apart for the first few minutes - generally left lots of terrain clearance. I don't think any of the local pilots went anywhere; a few flew above the top of the ridge and a few landed right after launching.  

The LZ was very relaxed, with pilots and their families picnicking in the sun. The local pilots agreed conditions were pretty spicy. After enjoying the atmosphere, the weather and my lunch, I packed up and went on a short tour of the village - very scenic.

Tracklog and some pics. Really, I need to get out more!