World Cup Sopot Bulgaria

I am just back from Sopot in Bulgaria - a little known (so far!) paragliding mecca. The area has a chain of mountains facing southwards onto flat valleys with about 40km of open playground before a couple of more tricky passes to both the East & West. The weather has been completely dodgy all summer but surprisingly suddenly changed as the World Cup tour arrived in town. I had been given a wildcard to compete, & i use 'compete' in the loosest possible way. There is no way I am up to competing with these guys but just being able to participate and fly along with them was an amazing learning experience. The first couple of days were spent relining & retrimming my glider. The photo above was taken when I had lost the plot totally and had left the whole Axis factory team fiddling with bits of string! My first actual test flight was the first task - conditions were a little lively at launch and it took me a while to work out whether this was in fact the case or if my glider was trying to kill me! I lost my grip on reality a little and flew out into the flat lands to compose myself and get a feel for what is now a completely changed glider but got back up to steam and followed the task for a couple of hours but being so slow meant I was alone in the flatlands at the end of the task which was hard. Each day was a lesson in using more speedbar and trying to stay with at least 1 gaggle. Flying with Hana and Renata for most of 1 task was great and proved that I can do it when I am in the right gear. Just the lack of competition over the past season means that some of my gear-changes are a little slow! Over the week 6 tasks were flown and although I didn't make goal I was real close a couple of times and its given me the bug to try to compete at this level again if possible. I just need to get a good result to try again for next year. :-)