Paragliding in Provence
Yesterday, I arrived to Gréolières, a beautiful little ancient village in the Alps of Provence. The plan is to fly for five days, writing a story for the paragliding magazine, and at the same time updating my paragliding license together with my old Swedish instructor Fredrik Gustavsson. It started softly yesterday with a calm 16 minutes soaring flight in the afternoon from Col de Bleyne. Just before take off, 17 huge vultures glided past us in a very impressing way.
Today, the weather was better, and we went up to one of the local starting places (the 300 meter start) and took off. After scratching for lift for maybe 20-30 minutes. I managed to clim up to the big ridge behind and above the start. Here the lift was better, and suddenly I was at more than 1600 meters of altitude, 500 meters higher than I started. For a short while I flew together with three big birds of prey, which felt awesome.
After a while, Fredrik suggested that we should glide over the valley to another village for a littl bit of cross country flying. Said and done. Then we flew back down the valley to Gréolières and landed.
Now it was high time for lunch. Just next to the landing field their is a little shop that sells a bit of eveything, including home-cooked food. Very handy. I had a slice of lovely paté and a juicy tomato.
After resting a bit at the landing field, we packed our gear ad went up to the start again. This time, the conditions were not as strong, so we just soared a bit, top-landed, and then took off again down the valley. Relaxing and nice.
In the evening, I decided to try the local cousine once more. I ended up at a little restaurant by the tiny main square (Gréolières is a rather small place, to put it mildly),having dinner with ”Fast frog”, a Parisien that just moved to the village to work as a designer for the paragliding brand Ozone (based just a few villages down the road). I devoured a very tasty lamb dish together with some fresh rosé, while enjoying the conversation.
All in all, I had a wonderful day.
Paragliding in Provence
tisdag 22 maj 2007
