After Monday’s front, today was an excellent flying day with amazing visibility and a very pretty Cu filled sky. the early flight had the base less than 100m above the hill, but the thermals were good enough to range well out into the middle of the valley. For the XC flight, Colin was the first to climb out and get away and was hovering around the Quarry 10km away while the rest of the group were still having problems getting up at the big spine. When we arrived at the Quarry Colin had fizzled out, landing Read the rest of this entry »

for our final day, after a week of stealing a flight here and there amongst generally poor conditions, the Saturday came up with some very pleasant thermic and light wind conditions allowing us 4 flights during the day, with small XC excursions along the valley towards the pass, and a classic evening restitution flight, ridge running to the corrals and back and then finally landing in the Long Bar. A great finish from our mainly Yorkshire group of X- and current PG Nationals marshalls, though a great shame that the hoped for epic days never happened. The coming week is looking very good from Tuesday onwards. Light winds from the SW so some convergence days expected.

On thursday the wind was too strong, but it was warm and sunny, so a walk in the mountains was the suggested activity for the day. I decided to take the guys to the lagoon called Laguna del Duque See the description in the routes section. It is one of my favorite walks because it is easy and yet you feel like a real mountaneer. The scenery once you reach the top is fantastic, very wild, with magnificent peaks all around you. This time in the year the broom has all its flowers on display and the yellow bushes make the landscape even more spectacular and fragrant.

The walk starts at the hydroelectric station of “El Chorro”, near Solana de Avila. This was built in the twenties, and the long tube coming down through the rocky gorge from the dam 300m above is still rather shocking. The climb took about 30 minutes, and then we carried on walking all the way round the lake and had a well catered picnic on a rock enjoying the views and the sunshine. No aminals were spotted except what looked like an otter in the water, but it turned up to be Mike who had gone for a swim in the freezing cold waters of the lagoon.

Two of my hives have been suffering heavily from Chalkbrood, so yesterday I used the Warré Pioneering Read the rest of this entry »

This first week after coming back from Pedro Bernardo (the brit nationals on the other side of the mountains) there has been a return of mediocre weather. This week we have number of the British nationals competition marshals, who normally get a few epic days on their weeks here. This week so far that has eluded us, with some reasonable flying at Chia and Peña Negra on Tuesday, and a very lifty, wave influenced flight last night at Peña Negra. During the day yesterday we did the river raft run from El Barco to La Maquina, and before that Alan and Mike helped me out with some work with the bees in the nearby Apiary. Today has started sunny, but too windy to do anything this morning.

On our last day with the group we went to Pedro Bernardo, it hope of a respite from the rain, and to drop off Khobi and Jan. I did an interview with the local Avila press, hoping to project enthuse the province with paragliding …both for Piedrahita, Pedro Bernardo and are multitude of sites and (normally) excellent conditions. We drove up the hill at the end of the day to check out the reconditioned track to ensure the ambulance could get up, and even mangaged a fly down over town for our group as the weather cleared at the end of the day. Today (Sunday) Paul and I will go across for the start of the British Nationals tomorrow.

An early start with a low cloud base but surprisingly pleasant thermal conditions with a light westerly. Half hour after take off some lower Cu formed out in front of take off which was fun to fly over and around. We had a window of about 45 minutes with improving conditions and nice climbs in the valley. Many of the group flew down the valley, and Keith and I, after a lowish save near Mesegar, flew onto Bonilla. Read the rest of this entry »

Windy weather and low cloud, but some breaks of sunshine. No flying but an opportunity to make some artificial swarms in some of my hives on the north of the Valley near Tortoles. It is very likely that they Read the rest of this entry »

You can read a little more about the long history of problems with the take off (see the PDF article Piedrahita, the first 500 years). The promise of reconditioning the launch area was made nearly two years ago now, but due to a change in political groups in the town hall and lack of money, Read the rest of this entry »

Just over a month ago much of the talk is spain was about how to get water to Catalunya because of their drought. Now they are in floods! We managed to salvage one flight yesterday, but Avila as the rest of Spain and much of Europe continues with showery weather.

The work at take off progresses. Yesterday they had finished smoothing the principal take off area. No rocks or bushes to snag lines anymore. They have begun to cover the surface with small sizes gravel. Negotiations continue for the large bottom landing site.

The poster for the events in Avila was printed yesterday, using one of Mark Haymand photos from last years British Open with an image of Avila from the air. I include the picture here….not to be confused with skies we are getting at the moment.