Advance paragliders in the West Country

In the red Renault bus again… I’ve definitely found my calling in life – climbing onto the roof-rack to load 14 gliders on top!

We still had a forecast for strong winds at 3000m, so that restricted the options a bit, however a good long 73km task was set taking in the usual run down to Tolmin and back (but with a slight difference), and then a run along the awesome ridge that runs behind the Stol takeoff before heading into goal.

The run down to Tolmin and back was pretty straightforward – it was working in all the usual places, but I got stuck for a while after getting the 4th turnpoint and had to grovel low down on the “pimple” behind Kobarid before I found a climb strong enough to enable me to make the transition onto the ridge behind.

I arrived on the ridge quite low and it took a while before I found a nice climb up to a sensible height, but from there bagging the turnpoint and getting back to the ridge was easy. Apparently Craig Morgan got so low there he wanted to swap his glider for a white water raft (though he did manage to climb out again). I contoured the hill for 3.5 km before I found the thermal of the week as far as I was concerned – a solid 5m/s for fifteen 360s took me from approx 1000m to 2100m in about 3.5 minutes. The views over the back towards Bovec and the high mountains behind was fantastic.

From here it was a 14km glide into goal via the final turnpoint – I had a good fast glide and overtook Mike on his Avax XC2 and Colin Hawke on his Boomerang GTO to get into goal in 3 hours 3 minutes.

Guy was first into goal from our house, followed by me, Al and Pete. Nick, Ben, Fi, Angus, June and Kussy didn’t make it…

Results here. A few more photos here. I’m now 53rd overall and 3rd in the Sports class. I’ve got to beat Toby by quite a margin tomorrow if I’m to get the top spot back 🙂