Taking off from the ridge just northwest of Gourdon, Fredrik and me soared and played in the thermals for a while. When we had sufficient height (maybe 300-400 meter over start) we glided south to Kennedy. Here, there were some small thermals that nevertheless lifted us high up again.

 

A new glide took us to the ridicously picturesqe mountain village Gourdon. A searched for lift for a while just outside the view-point restaurants, then found a migthy thermal that propellered me several hundred meters up as strong as 4-5 meters/second. When I was at around 500 meters over the original take off (which should be some 1600 meters above sea level), we left the lift (we were still going upwards) and headed back to the take off at the Gourdon ridge. Arriving really high, I had to deliberately loose height to be able to top-land. According to Google Earth (see the photo) that represents a triangle of more than 8 kilometers. Not bad! The flight lasted 1 hour 22 minutes.

 

This was probably one of my best paragliding flights ever. The leandscape is beautiful, with mighty mountains and cute villages.

 

Afterwards, weenjoyed a great lunch in Gourdon, celebrating with a glass of cool rosé. After a few hours relaxing, we went up again and played in the air. After an hour or so, I took a long (5,5 km) glide via Gourdon to the huge landing field down in the valley. I really like flying close to this old hill-top village, it is such a pretty sight.

 

In the evening, the celebrating continued with a barbeque at Fredrik & Lisa’s place in Gréolières. Excellent food, nice wine, animated discussions and some wonderfully smelly cheeses made it a great evening. Thanks!