Epic conditions today, but although the Avila valley was booming with the convergence set up from early on, the Piedrahita valley took a while to get going, taking most of our group down at the quarry, even though we waited almost an hour on the ridge for things to improve.

While hords of pilots (french spanish and my group of Belgians and brits ) were bombing around the quarry, Colin, was bimbling around further upwind near the Long Bar and gaing height. I managed to ride out the carnage at the Quarry by moving across the north side of the road, and was thinking of landing when Colin reported he was still in the air.

Colin has been a client for four years now, and will be 60 next birthday. The Belgians were ribbing him at the beginning of the week for being too old for paragliding, however, age has not set him back this week as he has been consistently outflying the young ones. For some reason it seems that my current paragliding heroes only have one leg…Craig Morgan, the current superstar of british paragliding, and also Colin. On top of his one leg problems, Colin also managed to bash up his other good leg two years ago when his landing approach took him onto a hidden rock, breaking his heel bone, and now leaving his only leg sticking out at an awkward angle and not much more use than the false one on the other side. However, Colin seems to not worry too much about this, and between lots of tea drinking and far too many cigarettes, just gets on with his flying. Today was his first time over the pass. Unfortunately he was a bit tired with a stiff neck just as we got to the epic cloud street setting up from around Muñogalindo to beyond the horizon. After Colin landed I could not resist going to base in the convergence, at at that time it was around 3300m.

The evening flight was fantastic, with easy rides to both ends of the ridge. I found a climb at 8.15 of 4m/s wth a Griffon vulture to 2600m which allowed me to do the ridges out front in the valley. The condition which we should have been enjoying a month ago are finally here…..though I only have one more day and I am off to Blighty

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