A long drive to Italy via Laragne had us arriving at midnight to a deserted camping site so we threw up the tent in the light of the truck headlights and crashed out to be woken at 7am by local organiser, Felice, apologising that he hadn't been there earlier (!!) to open up the shower block and turn on the hot water!. By the time a dozen Czech's had arrived there wasn't any hot water left anyway so we ran away to find breakfast and internet in Belluno. Having just arrived from the tropics Juan wasn't really up to the REALLY COLD cold that we were finding ourselves in so lots of clothes stealing was going on! Its probably a good thing that he had to leave before the comp started 'cos as I found out the cold we had experienced was nothing compared to that to come.Anyway it was a great week in Pieve d'Alpago floating around the Feltre valley, enjoying incredible scenery of the snowy Dolomites and some cracking thermals taking us up into the freezer-zone anywhere above 2200m! For the first task 7 layers of fleece and jackets just weren't enough to keep out the chill so during the second task it was increased to include ski trousers AND flying suit AND feather/down jacket, Lycra, 2 windstoppers, 3 fleeces and 3 t-shirts. I felt like the Michellin man and probably looked as streamlined! We had 3 great tasks over the 6 day competition and worthy winner was Craig Morgan, bouncing back heroically after his prang last summer in St Andre.
Free flying on the last saturdays reserve day I decided to check out the kite-surfers and windsurfers on the Lago Sta. Croce after a fun climb out from launch taking loads of photos. A great buoyant line had me over the beach taking photos (probably for slightly too long!) before deciding that my intended beach landing wasn't going to work with 80+ kites spread out and about. My enthusiasm for the scenery meant that I couldn't reach the landing back in Garna and I hadn't really given much thought to the reason that there were so many kites and surfers was that it ws blowing a hoolie. The landing probably wasn't my finest hour trying to sneak in amidst gusting wind into the village of Farra D'Alpago but I did find the stall and spin point of my glider. It was all rather exciting but fortunately uneventful :-).
I'm back in Laragne now enjoying some fun flying with Dave & Rachael and the Airways hanglider course....
1 comment:
Hi Nicky, sounds like you had a great time in Italy. Hope the weather stays good for you in France, though the forecast for there, and for Cataluna, the next few days is quite poor. Whereas its quite good here at the Mynd!
Post a Comment