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It's soarable again...get the gliders out
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It has been noted that the delivery of this year's blog has
been somewhat erratic. This was due to the unique way that Dell and Microsoft
interact, rendering my laptop unusable for the second half of our visit. At one point I
wondered whether I should deliver it into the tender embrace of a club
hammer, but I decided instead to just go flying.
And the flying was pretty good this year - no great flights
to the north for me, but to my credit I did manage to find several new and
interesting ways of cocking up. Even Jorg and Jutte only managed their first
visit of the season to the Matterhorn just as I was driving homewards. Still,
my logbook shows thirteen flights and 72 hours from the 20 days available this
year, so a good result, I guess.
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The club operation was very effective this year. The tuggies
really know what they are doing and were always ready in good time to meet the
demand.
The forecasting is more gliding based than it has been in more
recent years, focusing rather more on TopTherm than MeteoFrance.
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TopTherm - blue is good
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Scenic soaring
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Airspace News: Many of you will remember that, back in the good old days, gliders were
tolerated without hindrance over National Parks such as the Ecrins,
Vanoise and Mercantour mountains. Several years ago, the new parks
"management" (for want of a better word) decided to create areas
of prohibited airspace over the parks in order to protect the wildlife below.
No-one seems to know where the evidence came from to justify this and most
pilots followed grand French tradition by simply ignoring the rules, and
taking any subsequent fines on the chin.
More recently, it has finally been realised that overflying gliders
do not actually disturb raptors, chamois or marmots, so agreement has been
reached to permit gliders to fly along certain well- known corridors in the
Ecrins, such as the Route Royale, col de Terres Blanches and the pics
d'Agneaux near the Glacier Blanc. Hmmm,
let me think...so we now have the
freedom to fly dozens of gliders in both directions along one-kilometer wide strips over the
Ecrins; can anyone see a potential flaw with this
solution?
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Our travel arrangements went as well as could be expected. My outbound
travelling partner, Jayne, discovered that it takes a long, long day to make
the journey from GRL to Sisteron, while I, in turn, learned a lot en-route
about Stephen Fry from his audio biography.
As usual, Ariane and I broke the return trip at the Val
Moret near Magnant, mainly because we knew that there was a bottle of champagne
waiting there with our name on it.
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When in Champagne...
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However, quite possibly the sweetest moment of the entire holiday took place while we were on the ferry returning to Dover. Ariane and I were sitting outside on the deck when a largish group of
uniformly hoodied teenagers congregated next to us, one holding a battered guitar with a piece of string for a strap. It turned out that they were from the Morley Academy Senior Choir, just returning from a tour of Holland and Belgium. They played and sang casually to old and new pop songs; but they were good, really good.
And then, as we approached the port, with the White Cliffs looming larger, they launched into an
a cappella gospel song of such ethereal beauty that it took my breath away.
They drew an audience as others stopped to listen - it was a truly sublime moment.
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Until next year...
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