Portugal

Again, sorry it's been a while, but not much to write about really. Spent twelve days in Ager, started with the Artik 2 but on the second day I was almost ready to give up flying altogther. So the next flights I made on the Tattoo, didn't really do any more than top to bottoms but my confidence has been a little low.

We left Ager and drove to a campsite near Madrid, very nice and a bit expensive especially as we were too late for the swimming pool. We arrived in Portugal on Friday 31st and found the free camping. Saturday we were sitting outside the camp van watching guys jumping out of a helicopter doing acro. There were two shows on Saturday and two on Sunday. We got a lift up the hill on Sunday evening and watched the final acro show from take off. Then we were able to fly down.

Monday 2nd August was the first day of the competition, and we went to briefing at 9:30am and waited a few hours before going up to take off. The task was a turnpoint down the ridge (in to wind) and then 50k to goal. Typically I was one of the last pilots to take off, and that was with some help. Once I was off though it didn't take long to find a thermal and I was climbing nicely. It was great being able to get so high, but only to find I was still over take off. It took a while to even get to the start which was only just over one km away. I was about 3km from the first turnpoint and a hill got in the way so I landed! It was a bit of a walk to get to a village, but I was so happy about the flight and thermalling that I wasn't too bothered.

Tuesday 3rd August. We went to look at the results and John came in 4th, and I was 32nd, Team Parapikeys are 5th and I am top women (out of 6) and 6th in the sports class! :-) What a result! We drove to a different take off today which was over an hour away, unfortunately when we got up to the top the wind was over the back. Around 2pm there was a briefing where the results were announced from yesterday and I got around of applause for top woman. How odd was that! They took us to a place at the bottom of the hill by a river. I had a little paddle but John went for a swim, then we had a couple of beers before heading back to Linhares. We were able to do to some well needed grocery shopping on the way back too.

Just relaxing outside looking forward to one of John's chicken curries :-)