Advance paragliders in the West Country

With a great forecast but with strongish winds at 3000m, a 65km ish task was set up and down the valley as usual but with three tricky turnpoints at the Tolmin end to catch out the unwary.

I had a good start and made it down to Tolmin pretty easily. I got high on the “green wall” and followed the big second gaggle over to the far turnpoint. We were lucky because just before the turnpoint there was a nice thermal which allowed us to do all three turnpoints without having to go back to the green wall to top up.

However I did have a horrible glide for the last 1km to the turnpoint and only just had enough height to make it to the bottom of the Tolmin “volcano”.

But it was just enough and my desperate “please, please, please, please, please” evidently worked! From here I was pretty straightforward to do the final two turnpoints and into goal in 2 hours 12 minutes. But would this be enough to keep hold of my lead over Mike who got in 10 minutes before me after having a better glide to the last Tolmin turnpoint? (Actually, I’ve worked it out that if I hadn’t got stuck here for a few minutes I could well have been 2nd place in the Sports class…! But on the other hand, if I’d bombed here I’d have blown it big time, so I can’t really complain!)

As I arrived over goal I flew into a lovely thermal so I thought it would be rude not to have one last climb in more relaxing circumstances than the rest of the week! I circled gently for half an hour back up to 1800m enjoying the spectacular views and quietly reflecting back on a fantastic week’s flying. What a wonderful end to the week…

It turned out that although Mike managed to claw back some of the points, it wasn’t enough to overtake me so I held onto my third place in the Sports class behind Robert Smits (2nd) and Toby Colombe (1st).

Al and Pete made it to goal after me, but Nick, Fi, Angus, Ben, June and Kussy weren’t so lucky.

Task 6 results here, overall results here, sports class results here. Results page for all tasks here. Slideshow of photos from today here.

So, all in all a fantastic week’s flying, and if I include the two days flying before the comp I had eight out of nine really excellent days flying! That has to be a record! As for logistics and accommodation etc, I stayed with nine others in a great house in the beautiful village of Dreznica, run by Monika Kurinčič and her husband (and seven children!)

It was very comfortable, had wifi and a computer for us to use, a good kitchen and a lovely outdoor dining area.

For an extra 4 euros a day Monika prepared breakfast for us and provided the raw materials for our sandwiches too. Highly recommended! Full details on their website here.