Alptitude!

Samoens Landing

Windy day today,  no flying, so we decided to take a drive out into the Samoëns valley and have a look at some other sites, that we haven’t visited for some time.

Mountain Bike Trail Les Gets

First Samoëns, we saw a couple of gliders doing some top to bottoms launching off a secret place, because we couldn’t find it! It was a low safe take off though, so no climb outs, too windy anyway! We made our way up to the unofficial Borgeoise Launch where it was howling!  Far too strong, but at least is was nice to go up and have a look. It was south facing and would be great when the wind isn’t so forceful a presence. From there we looked straight across to Samoëns, which would start to work later in the day. We had a nice meeting with an Argentinian Pilot working there who was giving us a really detailed lowdown on the area.

Next we tootled off to Les Gets,  further along the valley, lovely town, and great for mountain bikers it’s really geared up for mountain biking in the summer with carved out sections, an excellent purpose built bike park! It’s a popular flying site but no-one flying today.  No matter it’s nice to do a spot of tourism occassionally.

Lastly a stop off in Mieussy, where they’ve changed the landing area, much better. There’s a good drive up a track to the launch, again a great launch area! On the way back a visit with our friends who live in St. Sigismond,  have recently returned from a UK visit, with lots of lovely goodies from Blighty, aaah! Late afternoon a couple of gliders were practicing a few acro moves flying off Agy, over the house where a thermal was elevating about eight buzzards! Nice spot to drink tea! It was very late before the wind dropped and only two acro gliders flew, and only for a few minutes!

Well it’s Bastille Day here today, and the fireworks are letting rip at the moment.  Dennis is on a Transfer run this evening, and may well get caught up in some celebratory traffic!

Just a couple of few pics in the slideshow.

Another scorcher today. The clouds were looking good early on, but kept growing… before long a  dark solid base was forming. There were a few gliders around lunchtime getting high up above the Fiz range. It was just so hot, we decided to enjoy the time we’ d got, it’ll all kick off again soon enough.  Gliders were getting high, but going nowhere. Tomorrow hopefully the temperature will drop and  become much more pleasant.

The storm arrived with thunderous cracks and lightning flashes, it’s getting to be quite a regular pattern, it pours with rain but does not remain cool for very long, before the humidity returns with tropical intensity. The cellar is the coolest part of the house just now, maybe we should relocate down there.

Tour de France Stage 8

Another sultry steamy day in the Alps. It’s darn oven hot in the house, and hot enough outside to fry eggs on the pavement! We’re keeping cool with the fan in full motion and enjoying the Sunday afternoon sports on the telly! There are a few gliders out doing top to bottoms but nothing more.

Interesting watching F1 this afternoon, and we’ve got the Tour de France hitting the Alps today, completing stage eight, in our neck of the woods. If you’re interested there’s a great live tracking/update to have a look at. I bet those guys would welcome some cooler air given the heat.

Then there’s the footy final this evening, although can’t say as I’m that enamoured with football…. just not my thing, and those joke shop trumpets?!….well, I ask ya?!

Big storm today! It’s been tropically hot with monsoon like temperatures, resulting in an incredible storm with the loudest lightening cracks I’ve heard in ages!! Thought that the storm would clear the air, but the temperature is still heavy, humid and oppressive even the rainfall appeared hot!

the new chariot!

We collected our new vehicle from Chambrey yesterday so Dennis has been occupied with all the latest dashboard technology. Our old VW minibus has served us well over the last decade, but it’s been time for a change for a while. We managed to find a really nice ‘almost’ new VW Caravelle with ‘some’ mod cons that turned out just great for what we need, especially with the Airport Transfers and all, and I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have the air conditioning!

Meanwhile, I decided it’d be good for me to upload a few of my flights onto the BHPA xc league, but try as I might, couldn’t load any! For one thing my name is different on my instrument so doesn’t tally with the registration, so tried to change it,  then was confronted with the file not being of a suitable format! Anyway, it seems I’m just going to have to leave it change my name on my instrument (when I get it back!) that is xc league friendly, forget the flights I’ve already flown this year and start completely from scratch! My instrument is away for repair at the moment as it’s been recording some outlandish readings. Hopefully I’ll get it back soon…. it’s been gone a week and I really miss it!

I tried to upload some of my flights onto our ‘flightlog’ page but unless I use the Garmin, I can’t do it unfortunately, am just not computer literate to that extent!  Anyway, the way round was to set up links to XC Contest where I don’t have any difficulty in uploading my flights so I’ve put a few up in the flightlogs page with links. They aren’t that spectacular by any means, but then there’s always time….