From Germany to Slovenia

We left Neufchateau on Monday pm and headed North in search of good weather and a flying site. Not even out of Neufchateau and we spot an Ozone glider flying over our heads! Later we picked up two guys who had flown from Fumay and were not having much luck hitching back. They took us straight to the site and John set up and had a fly. We went to the campsite only to find it closed at 7 and we couldn't get in. Camped on the car park.

Tuesday was spent parawaiting wind very light on take off then it went the wrong direction anyway. Spent the night IN the campsite.

Wednesday was forecast to be bad weather so we travelled through Luxembourg to Germany. We are staying in a campsite near Dahn and it's in a pine forest with the most amazing sandstone rock formations. We ate at the restaurant which had a Greek theme, but the food was excellent.

Thursday am we went for an early (well early for us) walk in the forest. We have been able to get online to look at the weather, doesn't look great anywhere, so we will keep travelling...
Found a campsite in Germany and we set up and cooked and had a few drinks.

Friday we travelled to see the guys in Austria got there about 4pm and they had had a task, hooray!

Saturday woke up to not great weather so the guys went up to take off only to be sitting in cloud, whilst John whipped my ass at crazy golf (doh!) Well the sun came out and then we saw every one flying in to the goal field, but no task :-( And then the heavens opened!

Sunday drove to Slovenia. We went over this mountain and the van was in first gear most the way up and most the way down. It really wasn't pleasant, so we took the motorway after that. Got to Kobraid at about 9pm and had some food and a couple beers.

Monday woke up to a thunderstorm, but now it's sunny, but a little windy. There is a possibility of some flying tomorrow.

Flying in Beauraing, Belgium

Sunday 23rd May. We drove to about an hour to a ridge about 170m high. The take off was a small clearing in the trees. I eventually got the courage to take off only to get my glove trapped in my brake line. I quickly assessed whether it was going to impede my flight as the glider was above me and really wanted to take off. It wasn't, so I did. In the air I just took my glove off (it was still tightly caught in the line but held on to it the rest of the flight. Luckily it was so warm I didn't get a cold hand. :-)

The rigde was quite long and I had a very nice flight. Probably the longest so far on the Artik 2. Picture of John not being able to land (again) and the campervan in the background.

Got back to the campsite and had a couple of beers...

John's blog http://john-ellison.blogspot.com

Saturday 22nd May 2010

Bad hangover :-( Didn't get up early.. John cycled into town to get some food and made a lovely ham and rocket sandwich :-) Did some Subaru work, just need to get online to send it over to them. Going out for pizza tonight and hopefully not too many nice beers ;-)

Friday 21st May 2010

Got up at 4:20am to catch the 8:15am ferry. John drove most the way and we found a half finished campsite in Belgium. We have the whole place to ourselves! We cycled in to Neufchateau to get some money and stopped for a small beer. Cooked omlette for dinner and had to open the Champagne to celebrate our first night away. Went to the bar at the busy campsite not to far away and sampled a few more very nice beers, before staggering back and finishing off the Jack Daniels...