Flying Over the Plateau de Valensole

Valensole and lavender fields

For the last 6 years or so I've been flying my paraglider in the mountains. But my new sailplane club is situated in pretty flat terrain (it's about 40 km to the mountains) and I find the lack of obvious lift sources a bit intimidating. Today started off blue all around the airfield (although cumulus clouds were visible in the distance) and that made things seem even worse. But I took off at the end of the pack and slowly built altitude as conditions improved. 

I flew over the Luberon for about an hour before coming back to the Plateau de Valensole. By then there were plenty of little clouds and the flying was pretty easy. I cruised around and took some pictures before landing back at the airfield for a flight of just over 3 hours.

Some pics