British Open Day 5

The chair-lift follows a slot in the trees and normally the ride up is very hot. There was a nice little breeze today on the way up and it made the ride more pleasant. But once on the plateau the wind immediately put in doubt the day’s flying; the forecast called for light winds, from the S turning SW, but the wind was much stronger than that.

The wind got stronger in the early afternoon and the only ones flying were students at the local school and professional tandem pilots – all using heavily assisted launches. Just crazy. Eventually, the wind got less strong, a shorter task was called but there was a lot of overdevelopment. I wasn’t convinced and was expecting to ride the chairlift back down. Two people launched and the task was cancelled.

Again, a lot of pilots flew down – this seemed even more dubious than yesterday. As I got to the bottom on the chairlift the first drops of rain started. A brief deluge and 30 minutes later it was all blue skies and sunshine. I headed to Seyne to see the citadel, but only had time from a brief tour before it closed.

PS As we were on launch and the South wind was strongest, a paraglider appeared high above us from the S, flying fast. It stopped for maybe 5 turns over the nearby peak (the Dormillouse) and continued North. To the North there is an impressive range of mountains called Les Ecrins – I haven’t checked out how the flight hits these mountains. I’ve climbed some of these peaks on skis, but flying over them seems a little – hmmm - committing. Turns out this was a 330 Km (around 210 miles) flight; not a record but not far from it; the retrieve was a commercial flight back South.