Great Day at Cott

It was supposed to be SW it was WSW most of the day. Everyone flew. Awesome day.

Saturday at Bakewell

Everybody went to bakewell. Some flew early in the smooth morning SE and we flew after lunch in quite thermic southerlies. I flew my dear fun as it is all my back will lift at the moment and Matty flew his Pegasus. We are planning to go for a fly in the country tomorrow with the power harnesses, should be 4 of us up at once!

Cott Again

Matty and I had a good morning at Cott, it was off to the south and ended up getting too strong in the afternoon.

Awesome day at Cott

We got up around 7.30am this morning and made it to Cott very early. The winds were lighter than forecast and mostly WNW. I flew for an hour and top landed early on when it was light. Then as the day warmed the air became less bouyant and more turbulant, but still fun ;-) It was 20knots much of the afternoon and great fun. Matty flew his colourfull Mars... A good Cott day.

Nasa Morning Glory Footage

Interesting story and photos & video of roll clouds during storms in the
USA.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/11oct_undularbore.htm?list1043252

Bye Bye Tenerife

Back to the UK. One last pretty sunset and a last photo as I waited for my flight at the south airport, accompanied as always by my good friend caffeine.

Send to Flikr

After a long time using Picasa for managing the photos on my laptop and Flikr for online storage and dreaming of a send to flickr button, I found one! It works great and can even tag and resize photos, it is fast and stable and thank you so much to the Open Source coders responsible for the plugin that made my dream come true. Find it here :

http://picasa2flickr.sourceforge.net/index.html

As you might expect for something that links Yahoo and Google products and is written by a third party there are bound to be a few potential issues, but nothing dangerous or drastic, just read the latest notes on the site.

Nigel was the man who got me through my PADI course with no problems at all. I can highly recomend him to anyone visiting tenerife and wanting to go diving. He specialises in one to one training and has an excellent teaching style and a sense of humour too.
My pentax w20 survived being taken down to 7meters despite only being rated at 1.5m , below 5m the buttons are held in my the water pressure but as long as you make sure it is turned on and ready to go before you get too far down it still takes great pictures and does not leak a drop internally. It is not the worlds greatest camera, by previous canon took better quality photos for the same meagpixels, but its quality is fine for an amatuer like me and the fact that it is nearly indestructable is far more important in my case ;-)

Alcala

Once I decided that I was not going flying anymore I needed something to do. My snorkeling had made me curious to see more of the ocean and I always meant to get my PADI open water licence. I dived here in Alcala harbour a few times and saw sea snakes (eels) and turtles and many large fish as well as the usual plastic bags and beer bottles that are no doubt now spread over every inch of the planet.

Supermercado

Great name if you ask me!

Sunset

After spending weeks driving around with the glider in the car and thinking every day was going to be the day I found that perfect place to fly I finally admited defeat. I only flew 3 times in Tenerife, twice at Taucho and once in a fit of desperation I tried to dune goon a small hill on the NW coast. Both the flights from Taucho were bombouts, the second flight was a brown trouser flight where I was seriously considering landing on the flat roof of a building before I got some unexpected lift and made a small carpark. The wind changed in the last 10 days and meant that some of the unflyable sites I had surveyed might have been flyable then, but when you are one man alone with a hang glider some times it is wise not to push your luck too far.

Snorkel

I got into the habit of climbing down the steps in front of the apartment every morning to go snorkelling after 'breakfast'. It is amazing how many schools of fish there are and looking down you can really see how the lava flowed out to sea creating the shoreline.

Gomera

I visited the island of La Gomera where you get the classic view of Tiede.
Its about 30km West of Tenerife so would be a good cross country flight if you were feeling lucky ;-)

Fun in the pool

Jason and Karl were only here for a week and it blew past. We explored most of the island, savoured the windy roads and got to cloudbase more times that I can remember. Unfortunately cloudbase was always at road level not hang glider level. I flew once whilst the guys were here, after you have flown a hang glider in Tenerife or even seriously thought about doing it you find that it hurts to walk. This is because your balls need to be very large indeed. Its not the taking off or the flying, thats similar everywhere, its landing in small sloping building sites amongst powerlines and large volcanic rocks.

Tiede

IMGP1220, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

We drove up the volcano but missed the last cable car to the top. Had a nice pizza in the north of the island....Drove through cloudbase twice...

Short Flight

IMGP1211, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

I was too late taking off and found no thermals, I was more concerned with landing safely in the small downhill sloping crosswind area that I had to land safely in. I pulled it off and I am a bit less worried about it now... The local tandem operator said I was the second Delta to fly here in 10 years, i can understand why!

Karls Sign!

IMGP1210, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

Taucho

IMGP1209, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

Here I am getting ready to fly.....Did you see the sign they have especially for Karl?

Cool

IMGP1205, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

There was a Paraglider soaring the apartment block and he landed only 500m away in a small patch of scrub.... I went to chat with him and arranged to fly Taucho with him the next day....

Fun

IMGP1198, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

I was just starting to realise I could have some fun with the whole under water photography thing when I looked up!

Camera Works under water!

IMGP1177, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

Pool

IMGP1171, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

Happy in the pool and testing my waterproof pentax....

Tenerife

I'll be soaring a volcano for the next few weeks!

Carnivale

karlcantpanba, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

After a week of non flying and grey skies karl decided to head south and get away from the miserable weather. The last day he was here we went to the notting hill carnival and it was excellent. Lots of happy poeple, huge rivers of people where you just got pushed along. Wicked sound systems with bass that make your vision blur. Even the sun made an appearance and it was a great day. Karl is in Spain with Jason at the moment, We are hoping to head to Tenerife soon.

Tourists

bottcantpan, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

In the end we did allot of touristy things like taking panoramic shots.
It has been the most non happening summer I can remember. I miss the sun.

Karl

karlpanna, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

After missing out in Switzerland I convinced Karl to jump on the train over from Paris to see a bit of the UK. I was hoping we could go and fly somewhere. As the English paraglider pilot so aptly put it "Go back to Australia, England is Pants for flying" We did some getting blown out and some sitting on the hill waiting for the wind to pick up and alot of marveling at the incredibly optimistic and cheerful forecasts that the BBC
provides.

Back to UK

IMGP0781, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

After a wet week in Aarau with family it was back to the UK. One straight drive leaving basel around 6.30pm after saying a quick bye to by cousin. I just made the 1AM ferry in Dunkirk and was home in bed by around 5.30am . An easy drive the whole way at 130kph

Water

IMGP0771, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

Aarau

IMGP0755, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

in Aarau it rained, the river almost burst its banks and low lying basements got flooded.

Furkapass

IMGP0727, originally uploaded by hangflyer.

After the forecast deteriorated I decided to take a short cut back to Aargau over the furkapass. In the dark motorbikes passed me fast enough to shake the suzuki and coaches executed 30 point turns to get around the narrow hairpins. Every kilometre is another sign advising the motorcyclists of their impending death.