Hello everyone! It’s time for the promised small blog post about René and my five-day stay in Czechia towards the end of June. Given that it’s now September and I leave Europe in just 3 weeks, I think it’s safe to say that I’ll never be up to date on this blog. But I’ll publish everything I can!

Friday 28 June: Mostly chores

We arrived in Frýdek-Místek mid-morning (for details on the trip to Czechia, please see my previous post), and spent the rest of the morning doing chores around town. That afternoon we caught up with René’s mum and for dinner we joined René’s grandparents, with whom we’d be staying.

Saturday 29 June: Teta Pavla’s birthday party

The next day was the event we’d come to Czechia for – René’s aunt (teta) Pavla was turning 50 and the whole family was getting together for a big celebration at the Vyšní Lhoty pub, called the Restaurace Maryčka, starting at around midday. Our dear cousin Stan was coming all the way from Prague as a surprise for Babička, so at 10:30 or so we made an excuse and drove into Frýdek-Místek to pick him up. We met him near the train station and he gave me a hug that almost lifted me off my feet before turning to give one to René, which prompted a couple of jokes about who the favourite family members were!

We popped into a local florist so Stan could buy a bunch of flowers for Teta Pavla – this is the standard birthday gift in Czechia, as I would find out in an hour or so! Then, running a bit late, we rushed back home, parked the van, and power-walked to the Maryčka, arriving at 12 o’clock precisely. The family had rented out the large function hall for the event; there was a huge T-shaped table set up in the middle and a number of guests had already arrived. Gratifyingly, Babička was suitably surprised and happy to see Stan! René’s family is quite large (or maybe it’s just by my standards – my family is so small) and I lost track as I was introduced to family member after family member, only a couple of whom spoke any English. But of course in typical Czech style they were all very warm despite the language barrier and René translated a number of compliments for me. It was such a pleasure when Jiří, Marika and Sebi arrived – lovely to have familiar faces and the chance to speak English. One thing I found very interesting was that every female family member was being introduced as “teta” (aunt) to 4-year-old Sebi, and every male as “strejda” (uncle). It’s a Czech quirk that every adult in a child’s life is either an uncle or an aunty, regardless of their actual familial relationship. It can get quite confusing for the children, as I would see!

When it seemed like just about everyone had arrived the chatter died down, and the guests started to form a line leading to Pavla, everyone carrying bunches of flowers. It was quite an unusual scene to me, like something that would happen when you meet the Queen or something – each family member would approach Pavla, give her the flowers and a hug or kiss (maybe not like meeting the Queen then!), which she would pass to her husband who would add them to a quickly-accumulating pile on a nearby table, and that family member would move to make way for the next one. René and I completed this ritual without incident. The comedy came when Jiří gave the flowers they had brought for Pavla to little Sebi, and told him to go ahead and give these to Teta. Of course poor Sebi, who had just been introduced to about 20 Teta’s, looked around in confusion, then spotted me, decided I was definitely a Teta, and came to offer me the flowers! He was quickly redirected by his dad but it was still a very cute thing to happen.

After that we were all seated at the enormous table, which was already laden with nibbles and alcohol, and the first courses (out of three) started to arrive. As I’ve mentioned many times, Czech cuisine is very meat-heavy and it hadn’t occurred to me that we would have a sit-down lunch at this party, so I was a little concerned about what might be served. I needn’t have worried – Teta Pavla had organised vegetarian courses for René and I and they were absolutely delicious.

After the meal, at which point I thought I might not need to eat again for several days, the music came on and everyone started mingling. That was pretty much how the afternoon continued – plenty of conversation and plenty of drinking (this is Czechia after all!). I chatted away to the few family members who spoke English and spent a bit of time playing with Sebi. Mid-afternoon we had some unexpected guests arrived – René’s cousin Radím, his wife Jana, and their two young children Filip and Adela. They’d just arrived back in Czech after an international holiday and we weren’t expecting to see them on account of the jetlag, but they made the effort and everyone was happy they did. Jana and Adela were even wearing adorable matching outfits! At around 5pm everyone was corralled into place by the stage and a family photo was taken.

I haven’t been part of a family photo like that in years, probably not since our last Harrap Family Christmas Party, which I think was in 2010. Seeing the picture made me so nostalgic, and I pulled up a photo on my phone to show René – one of our family photos from the early 2000’s, when I was about 5. He loved it so much that, after I’d explained who each family member was, he showed it to a number of his family members and explained my whole family to them, as well.

As the evening wore on the wine gave way to spirits and people started to dance. I had great fun being taught to dance the polka by René, although given how much we’d each had to drink it was really less like dancing and more like holding each other and spinning/running around the room. Our technique was technically correct, but a bit fast! We were some of the last to leave, at around 10pm – Stan, René and I pretty much stumbled back to Babička’s and fell asleep immediately. All in all, an excellent party!

Sunday 30th June – Flying with Stan

The next morning René and I rose late and made ourselves garlic soup for breakfast, a typical Czech hangover cure. The morning was pretty much lost but after some of Babička’s delicious Hungarian goulash and a slice of frgal for lunch we were all feeling much better! And as the weather was good and Stan wouldn’t be in town for long, we set off to hike and fly Prašiva – Stan’s first ever time paragliding! The first flight was good for me, I managed to thermal up above the ridgeline and spent 25 minutes in the air, but unfortunately René and Stan weren’t so lucky with finding the rising air and 5 minutes after launch they were on the ground. I spiralled down to join them and was pleased to hear Stan raving about the flight, despite its brevity! The wind was strong on the landing so René and I spent some time ground-handling – it was even strong enough that when René gave me a push I lifted several metres off the ground, which is always great fun!

When we got bored of that we went up for another flight – the conditions had changed a bit and the launch was extremely challenging. René and Stan took off so low and with such poor wind that René’s legs went through the upper branches of the pine trees below launch – if they’d been a metre lower it would have been a very bad time for both of them! My flight was short and sweet with a challenging launch and landing – definitely good practice. After packing up our gear we headed to the Restaurace Kohutka, the local brewery next to the landing field that René and I like. We’d brought the shisha with us in the van and enjoyed ourselves at an outside table in the sun with a few of Kohutka’s craft beers. A number of pilots from El Speedo turned up at around the same time and they joined us for an hour or so as well. Definitely a pleasant way to spend a summer evening!

Monday 1 July

Stan stayed in Vzšní Lhoty the next day too, but I can’t recall what we got up to, except that in the evening René went to Frýdek-Místek to meet his friend Lenka and Stan and I stayed at Babička’s drinking beer, smoking shisha, and sending René photos of us telling him how much he was missing out!

Tuesday 2 July

After lunch on Tuesday René, Stan and I hit the road. We dropped Stan at the Brno train station so he could catch a train to Prague, then drove as far as we could until the light faded. We found a nice rest area in Austria to park in overnight and continued the next morning, arriving in Bolsterlang shortly after lunchtime. And that was the end of that particular Czech adventure!

Thanks for baring with me through the long pauses between posts. The next one will be about our experiences at the Colours of Ostrava music festival in mid-July – there’s plenty to write about and I promise I’ll try to have it uploaded in less time than this post has taken!

Hello readers! Once again I am inexcusably behind in my blog posting. One thing you don’t think about when starting a blog (or maybe it’s just me who didn’t think about it) is that it takes an awful lot of time to keep it up and there’s so often something more pressing to do. It’s one month today since the events I’m just now starting to write about, so my memory is a little hazy, but I will do my very best to capture some of the fun that René and I had on our second stint in the Austrian Alps.

Monday 24 June: Austria bound!

We woke up early on Monday – René was hoping to be at the top of Nebelhorn to begin his bivouac by about 11 (and it’s a long hike up). We’d slept in the van at the bottom of the Hochgratbahn, which meant we saved ourselves the 90 minute walk down, but we still needed to pack up the camp, have breakfast, and do a chore in nearby Sonthofen first. So by 8am we were at the bureau, so that René could find out some more about being self-employed in Germany. His employment with Vogelfrei was contingent on him being self-employed somewhere, and so he had to make the choice between becoming self-employed in Germany and becoming self-employed in Czech – he’d already done the latter once, but with no knowledge of the German system we figured it was best to ask the experts so he could make an informed decision. Unfortunately for us the staff member at the bureau knew less than we did about the process and was unable to answer a single question. Useless! But at least it made it a short chore. René ultimately decided to stick with the Czech system as he knows it better.

So after that we bought some food for the bivouac and then drove to Oberstdorf so René could begin his adventure. We had a quick coffee (there hadn’t been time for one in the morning) and then ran into some of the Vogelfrei pilots and got chatting, so in the end René forked out €30 for a ride on the Nebelhornbahn rather than lose valuable flying hours hiking the 2224-metre mountain. We said our goodbyes at about 11 and then I got on the road to Werfenweng.

My plan, as you may recall, was to stay in Bischling for a few days and try to get my 60km XC once and for all, while René bivouaced all the way across the Alps to Vienna, and then we’d reconvene and drive to Czech. It was the first day of the heatwave and driving through the midday sun in the van was highly unpleasant, especially when I got stuck in a traffic jam for about 2 hours just outside of Salzburg. Luckily the drive gave me plenty of time to plan for my upcoming XC attempts, and I realised one very important factor. I was planning to use my phone as my sole flying instrument for my XC flights – it would both display my flight data, and record my tracklog so I would have proof of each flight. But recording and displaying all of this data takes a lot of power, and if I were to be flying for a long time my phone might die on me, depriving me of my in-flight data but also (more importantly for licence reasons) the tracklog proof. So while I was in the traffic jam I looked up a shop in Salzburg that sold a cheap power bank, and made a slight detour to pick one up before heading to Werfenweng for the evening. I would be very thankful that I’d done this within about 24 hours time – my flight the next day would use two-and-a-half times my phone’s battery power.

It was nice to be back in Werfenweng, surrounded by beautiful Bischling, Tennengebirge, and Hochkonig, but strange to be there without René! But I took advantage of this – I’d been wanting to watch The Sound of Music while we were there last time, but René despises musicals and we turned it off after less than 10 minutes. For any readers unfamiliar with this movie (from what I’ve gathered it’s only really popular in western countries), it’s a musical set in Salzburg at the beginning of World War II. It was one of my favourite movies as a child and it was such a pleasure to rewatch it now, having not seen it for at least 15 years, surrounded by the very mountains I could see on the screen. The only downside was that I realise now how dated it is and how ridiculous and anti-feminist the plot is – but the songs were still great! And after that I got an early night, ready for a hike and fly the next morning.

Tuesday 25 June: XC 68km

The next morning dawned bright and hot, even at that early hour. I skipped breakfast (as per usual for me) and even skipped my regular coffee (it’s a diuretic) and drank maybe half a cup of water. That would be all I would drink, on the hottest day of the hottest heatwave in European history, until roughly 5:30 that evening – although I wasn’t to know that at the time. My reason for this was that, as you may recall, during both of my previous attempts to get my 60km straight line flight, I’d had to land because I needed to use the bathroom. This was despite not drinking very much before either flight and using various strategies to try and avoid the issue; and it was such a cause of frustration that I vowed to do everything in my power to avoid it on this, my third attempt.

I began the hike up Bischling at about 8:30. It took a long time to get up – partially because of the heat and dehydration, partially because of the installation of fences. Over the wintertime Bischling is a skifield, and as the snow melts in springtime it’s an easy walk up the grass, but once summer hits fences are erected so that the area can be grazed by herds of cattle. By the time I arrived at the summit (around 10:15) I was feeling very weak, dizzy and nauseous. I lay myself down on a bench outside the summit hut in the shade and tried to steady myself, when a member of staff approached me. I recognised her; on one of our previous hikes of Bischling she’d told René and I off for eating our lunch at one of the outside tables, which were supposed to be for customers only, although she’d allowed us to stay that time as it wasn’t too busy. She asked if I was okay, to which I responded that I would be fine, I just needed to rest and cool down a little. And I was still lying there a few minutes later when she came with a wet towel for me to put on my forehead! I was extremely grateful for the kindness.

After maybe 20 minutes of resting the nausea had subsided a little so I ate a small lunch (two hard-boiled eggs) and then started to prepare my things. Looking to the sky was a bit of a cause for concern – not a single cloud in sight. Clouds are formed by thermals and a lack of them either means it’s stable (and therefore cross-country will be off the cards) or it’s a rare blue-sky thermal day. Blue-sky thermal days sound nice to the non-pilot but watching the size, shape, location and development of individual clouds is how an XC pilot gets 90% of their information about the conditions, and specifically about where to find thermals – so a cloudless blue sky makes the pilot’s job much much harder, as the positions of thermals have to be guessed. I prepared my glider on the east launch, surrounded by other pilots – as the summer season had begun, the gondola was operating every day and plenty of pilots were flocking to the site. I was still a bit shaky for my first launch attempt, and bungled it, but made it into the air on the second attempt.

I knew from the previous two flights that I needed to be at least 2500 metres above sea level before attempting the first jump across the southern valley – given the blue sky conditions, I wanted to be higher to give myself a greater margin of error. There were definitely thermals around, but they were rough and turbulent, hard to find and even harder to hang on to, and I found myself climbing to about 2300 metres multiple times only to lose the thermal and drop back down to 2000. There were plenty of other gliders flying and we were often sharing thermals – one funny incident that stuck in my mind was when I was sharing a thermal with another pilot, and I was close enough to see that he was a man in his 50s or older. When he finally exited the thermal he flew just a few metres away from me, took out an old-fashioned camera (one of those little silver ones that were popular in the mid 2000’s) and took a photo of me! I can’t say I’ve ever had that happen before. Finally, after 90 minutes of struggling to get the height I needed, I set out from 2500 metres heading south, knowing that given the starting height my margin of error once I reached the other side was pretty much non-existent. There were three pilots in front of me attempting the same jump, which had given me the confidence to go for it – I could see where they flew and if they lifted or sank, and make decisions using that data. I arrived at the other side of the valley below the ridgeline (roughly 1700 metres ASL), and was scratching around trying to find something that could take me above it to where the decent thermals would be. High above me I watched as the three pilots thermalled up and then jumped away to the east. It was a long time before I found anything worthwhile and I had almost started to think about bailing out, but eventually I fought my way above the ridgeline. High above the peak were two fluffy clouds in that big blue sky – by watching them I could pinpoint a thermal and climb it all the way to the base.

From there, with just over 3000 metres above sea level, I began the second big jump of the flight, to the west. This time I made it with a fair bit of height to spare – nice for a change! I battled west along the ridges, past Hochkonig (seeing it from the air is an unreal experience!) towards Zell am See and my final destination, Pinzgau Valley. The further west I went, the stronger the headwind became – this was an unanticipated development which I was not happy to encounter! My glider is great for XC except when I have to fly into a headwind – René and I joke that in these conditions my glider both looks and flies like your average mattress. The combination of the headwind and the challenging thermals made me very slow – what I could normally have flown in an hour took 90 minutes at least – but I kept fighting. Luckily I managed to maintain a decent height above the ground, and I just kept pushing forward as best I could. I even broke my all-time height record, just before the jump across Zell am See town – 3400 metres above sea level, almost 2 and a half kilometres above the valley floor. What you can’t see from up there isn’t worth seeing!

The jump across Zell am See went smoothly – I even ate a piece of stale bread and took a sip of water while I waited – and I could see plenty of pilots flying from Pinzgau Ridge, which bolstered my confidence. I took the so-called “high road” along the top of the ridge – the last time I’d flown here I took the “low road”, closer to the valley floor and jumping from rib to rib rather than riding along the spine. But even though I’d heard that the high road of Pinzgau is legendary for its thermals, I found myself struggling to find them. I kept pushing along the top as far as I could, but eventually they just stopped altogether. I sank down and steered out into the valley a bit, hoping that I could find some lift, but instead finding nothing but a strong headwind. My phone was telling me I’d flown 68km – the last time I’d attempted this I’d flown 65km, but it still hadn’t counted because it had only been 55km in a straight line from launch to landing. Unfortunately there’s no way to make the phone display the straight line distance in flight, as only the NZHGPA cares about straight line distance, so there’s no demand for such a feature – it’s displayed in the tracklog data when you review the flight on landing. In the air, I had no way of knowing when I’d made the required 60km straight line – but as I sank I knew it was a coin flip whether I’d make it or not.

I was so exhausted by this point – I’d been flying 5 hours with no meaningful food or water, in intense UV radiation from the sun but intense cold from the altitude, and my body and mind seemed about ready to give up on me. But I kept pushing into the headwind as I sank, cursing the conditions, terrified that after so much effort and pain I might land 100 metres too close. Strategising, I flew diagonally across the valley so that my distance from the landing would be that little bit extra, coming in low over the busy highway, crossing the train tracks just before a train came, and finally touching down in a nice open field. The heat was intense and I quickly stripped off my puffer jacket, merino jumper, pants and thermal underwear that I’d worn to protect against the cold. And only after that did I check my phone for the straight line distance: 60 kilometres and 370 metres. It wasn’t by a lot, but finally, finally, I’d done it.

Total distance: 68.64km

Total time: 5 hours 8 minutes

Flight data and 2D tracklog

3D tracklog

YouTube video

Note: taking GoPro footage was my absolutely lowest priority for this flight, and given my physical and mental state during it it’s not too surprising that I forgot to video the launch, the landing and plenty of other bits in between. I also had my camera adjusted a bit too high for lots of the footage. But it’s still a good video for showing at least a little bit of the beauty of the Austrian Alps in this flight!

I knew I should celebrate but first I needed to get back to the camp and fix my poor, much-maligned body. The heat and extreme dehydration had left me struggling to keep my eyes focussed and with a feeling as if someone was hitting me on the forehead with a hammer every second or so. I downed my 750ml water bottle in one in the hopes it might help, then packed my glider and walked to the road. As I did I texted René the good news; he was very happy for me, but also disappointed for himself – his bivouac hadn’t gone to plan. As I had noticed, the further west one went the fewer thermals there were until there were none at all – and he had been much further west than I had been, meaning that he didn’t stand much of a chance. Heatwaves are generally pretty good to fly in, but sometimes they’re just too hot, resulting in stable air – and that was exactly what had happened this time. He was on the train to Werfen, and would meet me there.

I was very lucky with getting home. I stood at the bus stop, intending to catch a bus to Zell am See and get the same train as René, with my thumb out while I waited just in case someone was feeling generous. And in fact two people were – a couple of kind Austrian men, driving an empty passenger van to somewhere north of Salzburg. I sat in the back seat with the window open and tried to cool down for an hour as we drove towards the city. They gave me a lift all the way to Werfenweng, even though it was several kilometres off the highway, and I was beyond grateful – I wasn’t really functional enough to do anything at that point. It was a 20 minute walk from Werfenweng to the van and I arrived there just as René was arriving at Werfen train station. So I guzzled some more water and drove to get him. Fun fact: driving when you’re experiencing severe dehydration is a lot like driving tipsy! But I made it in one piece (thank God) and we went to the supermarket where we bought dinner things and a large sports drink full of electrolytes as plain water still didn’t seem to be helping my hammering headache. It did the trick and we spent a pleasant evening together smoking shisha and enjoying the sunset over beautiful Hochkonig, and I went to sleep with a huge smile on my face.

Wednesday 26 June: Drachenwand Klettersteig

Wednesday and Thursday were both forecasted to be stable so on Wednesday morning René and I decided it was time to leave Werfenweng and enjoy some of the other mountain delights that the Austrian Alps have to offer. Shortly after we arrived in Europe we’d bought via ferrata sets, and decided that now would be the perfect time to break them in. For any readers unfamiliar with via ferrata, it’s similar to rock climbing but on (marginally) less steep slopes, and instead of climbing with a rope you carabiner yourself to a large metal cable and follow that up the rock face. After a bit of browsing we found the must-do Drachenwand ferrata (or Klettersteig, as it’s called in German), slightly east from Salzburg. So we packed up the camp and headed towards the starting point, near the beautiful village and accompanying lake, Mondsee. And if there’s one thing I can say about the Drachenwand Klettersteig, it sure is set on an impressive piece of rock!

We parked at the designated starting area, dug out our ferrata kits from the depths of the van, and began the hike through the forest to get to the rock face. Even in the shade of the trees the heat was absolutely intense. We arrived at the bottom of the ferrata, got into our harnesses and helmets, and began to climb. Within about 5 minutes I was uncomfortable; within 15 I was scared. The rock face was extremely steep and the rocks themselves had been worn smooth from the countless ferrata-goers, making them very slippery. Obviously we were carabinered to the cable but if you fall it can be up to 5 metres in some places, and you kind of slide painfully down the rock rather than falling away from it like you do in climbing, due to the closeness of the cable. They’re also one-use only – I think of it as being like the emergency parachute in my glider, in that they’ll save your life but you’ll probably break something if you use it. As well as that, ferratas are done in regular sneakers rather than climbing shoes, meaning I couldn’t use my toes to grip the rock like I normally do in climbing. René, as always, was fearless – he trusted his gear and trusted his ability to climb the route, so there was nothing to be afraid of, but I trusted neither my gear nor my ability. But as we got further up the ferrata I became more used to it and more trusting of my ability, and it became much easier. As we climbed the view became more and more incredible, looking out over Mondsee lake.

About two-thirds of the way through we came to fork in the ferrata – we could continue left, towards the summit, or go on a detour to the right, towards a swinging bridge. We chose the latter and it was the highlight of the whole ferrata. In the Drachenwand rock face, hundreds of metres above the valley, was a huge rift with a wire bridge going across it, and on the other side was a wooden bench, screwed into the side of the cliff. We made our way there to sit down and enjoy the view, and it was only while sitting that René felt any fear! I was very comfortable but even though we were still attached to the cable René was so uncomfortable that we didn’t stay long. Another couple of ferrata-goers overtook us as we were sitting there – they offered to take a photo of us, which we happily accepted, only they took it with their phone and after they overtook us we didn’t see them again! But at least I got a photo of René just before crossing the bridge.

The last part of the ferrata was very intense – more like regular climbing, but still without the safety of a rope – and culminated in a sheer face with iron bars sticking out of it that had to be used like steps. And then we were at the top! The view was stunning. We enjoyed it while we packed our ferrata sets back into the backpacks, and then began the long walk down, following a trail through the forest behind the rock face.

By the time we reached the valley again we were exhausted and extremely sweaty, so we drove to beautiful Mondsee lake and had a lovely swim to cool off. Our intention for the next day was to have a few flights at Mt Gaisberg before driving to Czechia, as I need to get my numbers up for my license, so we drove there that evening and slept in the van beside the landing zone. All in all, a good day!

Thursday 27 June: Flying Gaisberg

Thursday was the last day of the heatwave. René and I were woken early by the heat and had a leisurely morning watching pilots land from the shade of the van – so leisurely that we forgot we were supposed to be getting the 9:50 bus to the launch, and it was only when another pilot asked me what the time was at 9:40 that we remembered! After a scramble to pack our things and brush our teeth we made it to the bus stop and shortly after 10am we were on the launch. There we met Wolfie, René’s future employer, and had a nice chat with him before setting up our gear and preparing for flight. The intense heat meant I was flying in just a sports bra and shorts, and it sure is refreshing to have that 40kmh breeze on your exposed skin! There was a strong westerly, meaning good soaring from the west launch, and I intended to practice my touch-and-go’s – a technique where you land back on the launch, stand there for a few seconds without putting the glider down, and then launch again. This helps a pilot learn how to top-land (i.e. land on the launch) but with the added bonus for me that each touchdown counted as the end of a flight and each launch was the beginning of another one, meaning I could get 10 flights in 20 minutes if I really wanted to. Unfortunately though I missed my shot – I was having plenty of fun just flying for 10 minutes, then as soon as I made up my mind to try my first touch-and-go, the wind lessened and I dropped below the launch and ended up having to land 10 minutes later. Bugger!

René did a couple of touch-and-go’s and then landed too, and caught the bus up again although the conditions were starting to look questionable. Sure enough, when we got to the top the wind had completely switched direction, coming from the north rather than the west, and was so strong that not a single other pilot was flying. We set up our gliders anyway, and I had to cripple mine with the brake lines to stop it from launching on its own! René went first, then me – it wasn’t the most pleasant launch but I managed it just fine and I’m always happy to practice launching in challenging conditions. In the air I was barely moving forward, and had to use the speed bar to make some headway, going straight for the landing. It was a short flight but a valuable one, and we packed up quickly to head back to Mondsee for lunch. After our usual snack (bread and hummus) and lovely refreshing dip in the lake we began the drive to Czech Republic. So much for our promise to only drive at night from now on! But the traffic wasn’t too bad. We ended up the day just over the border of Czech, in a little village called Lednice known for a beautiful castle and excellent local wines. We wandered around the castle grounds for an hour or so then found a spot underneath a lookout tower to enjoy some delicious local white wine and sleep.

Epilogue

The next morning we were up early to drive the final couple of hours back to Frýdek-Místek. Several interesting things happened over our 5 day stay in Czech, probably just enough for a small blog post which I’ll begin writing when I have some time. The word count of my posts has been creeping up with each update – I can’t remember the last time I wrote one of less than 4000 words! But I’ll do my best. Stay tuned 🙂

Hello again! René and my time at Staufner Haus turned out to be the longest stay in one place that we’ve had in the trip so far (with the exception of René’s grandparent’s house in Czech) – almost two and a half weeks. While we were there we worked about every second day – doing breakfast service, cleaning the hut, or doing dishes during the lunch or dinner service – in exchange for our food and board. This was lovely as it left lots of time for relaxing, but we still felt that we were pulling our weight. I don’t have the energy or inclination to write a day-by-day analysis of our stay, and if I don’t have the energy or inclination to write one then you definitely don’t have the energy or inclination to read one! So this will be a highlights reel of sorts.

Friday 7 June: Arrival at Staufner Haus

So René and I left beautiful Bischling and the Austrian Alps behind us, driving west through the flatlands and Munich before turning south into the Alps once again. The drive wasn’t the most comfortable due to the day’s intense heat and the van’s lack of air conditioning, but we made it without too much trouble (although we did vow that from now on we would be travelling only at night!). It took a significant bit of navigation to find our way to where we needed to be – René’s friend Lukáš, who manages the mountain hut Staufner Haus, would drive to the valley floor to get us, but it sure was an obscure valley! We parked up in the gondola carpark and just a couple of minutes later, Lukáš arrived. René was delighted to see him and I was very pleased to meet him as well. He talked to the gondola staff and got us a long-term parking pass, then we loaded up his ute with the gliders and everything we’d need for a few days’ stay, and we set off up the road. Lukáš said he was glad we had plenty of weight in the van (those gliders really add up) as the road can be challenging, and that was an understatement! It was all rocks, many the size of my fist, and was often 45 degrees steep, even on sharp corners. René and Lukáš chattered away in Czech as he drove us up and I looked out the window and hung onto the grip of the door for dear life as we bumped on the holes and skidded round the turns and spun the wheels.

Staufner Haus is located on Hochgrat, a 1834 metre high mountain in the northern foothills of the German Alps. Just below the peak of Hochgrat is the gondola station. It’s a cute gondola, too – very slow, ancient (from the 60’s by the looks of it), and the gondola cars are painted canary yellow with cartoon bumblebees – adorable! And just below the gondola station is Staufner Haus. It’s a mountain hut in the European sense of the word – very different from what I’m used to! NZ mountain huts are generally small one-room shelters, unstaffed and without electricity; just a few bunks, a tap with rainwater collected from the roof, and maybe an ancient wood stove if you’re lucky. They’re very cheap or even free to stay at, but they’re designed as a shelter from the elements and no more. Every European I’ve told that to has looked almost affronted at the thought! European mountain huts are basically small hotels. Staufner Haus is three stories plus a basement and has room for 75 guests across more than a dozen rooms, ranging from 16-bunk rooms to double bedrooms with feather duvets. The ground floor of the hut is devoted to a large bar with two dining rooms (seating around 70, plus another 30 or so on the outside tables in fine weather), and a commercial kitchen serving a wide variety of traditional German meals, as well as a small staff lounge/office. There are bathrooms on every floor and dedicated shower-rooms for men and women, as well as a drying room for wet clothing and shoes, and multiple bedrooms for staff including the manager’s suite, which has its own en-suite. In short, a very different beast from what I’m used to, and infinitely more comfortable!

We soon found we weren’t the only guests of Lukáš’ for the first night – a couple, mutual friends of both him and René, had come to visit as well. Their names were Petra and Vašek and they were both very nice and interesting people as well. Petra likes to train dogs and they had two dogs with them, an adult named Billie and a puppy named Zoey – both were very polite, which is a trait I like in a dog!

We were also introduced to the staff on that first evening. In the kitchen were British chef Sophie, her German girlfriend Luisa (also a chef), and a lovely older woman named Gudrun who helped make the side salads and prepare things. The front of house staff were Natasha, a German woman who just worked on the weekends; Anil, a Nepalese man who emigrated to Germany to be with his wife; Nelly, a German girl who was also an amateur paraglider pilot; Karol, a Czech friend of Lukáš’ who had come to help for a couple of weeks while he was understaffed; and of course Lukáš himself, also Czech, and an accomplished pilot (hence his connection to René). With such a small staff all living together the hut had a lovely vibe, like a family all working together to make the place run.

It was still beautiful and sunny so Petra, Vašek, René, Lukáš and I sat at a table outside and drank beer. As the evening wore on we moved to the back porch (private for staff only) and watched the sun set, then went for a walk to the ridge to look south into the dusky Alps.

It really was a lovely introduction to the place which would be our home for the next two weeks! Unfortunately Petra and Vašek left the next morning but it was still such a pleasure to be able to spend an evening with them.

Saturday 8 June: Flying Hochgrat

The day after we arrived at Staufner Haus was looking flyable, and René and I were excited to try out the new site. Although Hochgrat is in the foothills of the Alps, the direction, size and shapes of the ridges behind it means it’s not an ideal starting place for cross-country, but it’s fine for short flights or even some soaring if the wind is strong. So René, Lukáš and I put our gliders on our backs and 15 minutes and some aching lungs later (Hochgrat is very steep!) we were at the peak.

Launching from a peak can be challenging, as if there’s any wind there’s probably a bit of rotor as well. But the wind was coming from the south and the only south-facing launch on Hochgrat is at the peak, so it was that or nothing. Sure enough, the three streamers at the site were indicating a strong westerly, strong northerly, and strong easterly respectively – so not just a bit of rotor, quite a lot! Lukáš was adamant it was safe to launch but I wasn’t so sure, especially seeing as we’d have to fly over a saddle in the ridge to get to the landing zone (on the north side of the ridge) and getting close to the ridge would put us back in serious rotor. But Lukáš went for it, his launch was fine, and he seemed to be doing okay. Next was René – he wasn’t so lucky! He brought the glider up only for it to immediately turn 90 degrees to the right in the rotor; but he put it back down and tried again, and managed to control the wing enough to get off the hill.

Ultimately I decided I’d give it a shot. I brought the wing up and it was jumping around left and right from the rotor – I was running sideways back and forth across the hill trying to keep it from collapsing, but still I made it into the air. I followed René to the west and we got some nice thermals, climbing up quite high and getting lovely views of the flatlands and the Alps, as well as the valley where the town of Oberstdorf and famous mountain Nebelhorn are located (about 20km away in a straight line). After about 15 minutes we headed north towards the landing, and I did a couple of spiral dives to get down – good fun! Although trying to lose the last 100 metres of height was a challenge – I kept getting stuck in thermals and was going up even when I pulled “big ears” (making the wing significantly smaller so I would sink faster). The two official landings are at the bottom of a steep valley – they’re small, on uneven ground, hemmed by trees, fences, and power lines, and the wind gets funnelled through them, making both of them very challenging. René and I both opted for a slope landing instead on one of the more open (and therefore safer) fields; then we met up with Lukáš, who hadn’t been so lucky finding thermals and had landed 20 minutes earlier, and the three of us caught the gondola back up – it’s free for Staufner Haus staff, thank goodness!

The wind kept picking up through the afternoon and in the evening it looked like it might be soarable. So at 8pm the three of us grabbed our gliders again and headed up the hill about 20 metres, to launch into the strong northerly. When we got there it was gusting strongly, with no wind at all and then suddenly a huge gust, but my inexperience with soaring meant I didn’t identify this as a danger sign. Again Lukáš launched first, then René, then me. The air was absolutely horrible – during a gust you’d be catapulted upwards, but then when the gust died you’d drop out of the sky at quite a speed. I thought it must be just me not enjoying it, but then René landed after about 5 minutes and Lukáš about 30 seconds later. I had decided to land by that point but ultimately I didn’t have a choice in the matter – 10 seconds after Lukáš landed the gust I was in died, my groundspeed increased from maybe about 5kmh to 30kmh, and I accelerated and sank towards the fast-approaching hill. I tried to flare the glider (the manoeuvre used to land) but it was no use – I hit the ground hard and at speed, feet first then head (thank god for my helmet!), and was dragged a couple of metres on my front up the grassy slope before the glider hit the ground. My clothes and new harness were covered in dirt from the drag and I was pretty shaken, but at least I learnt a valuable lesson from the experience – no soaring when it’s gusting!

A side note – when I first started paragliding I found it strange that pilots wore helmets, and I’ve heard this opinion voiced by non-pilots near launches too. If you’re falling out of the sky at terminal velocity, what’s a helmet going to do? Of course it’ll do nothing, but if you have a gnarly launch or landing, they can be game-changing.

Wednesday 12 June: Walk with Mammut & that sunset!

The Wednesday after we arrived at Staufner Haus we weren’t required to work and the weather was lovely, so we decided to go for a walk with Mammut instead. He’s the only important character I haven’t introduced yet – Lukáš’ delightful bear-like dog, with a beautiful honey-coloured coat and heterochromial eyes, one brown and one blue. He got on particularly well with René, as the latter is much more willing to wrestle with dogs than most people. Mammut lives at Staufner Haus as well, but he’s always up for a walk, so we took him for a nice long one – up to the peak, then all the way down into the valley floor, then back up the road to Staufner Haus. He loves water and snow and whenever we passed large patches of snow he’d jump on them, rolling around and then sliding down the hill on his belly like a penguin, pushing himself with his back paws. He’s such a character!

The route we took with Mammut involved walking through or near a lot of fields full of cows, which I really enjoyed. The cows in Allgäu (the area in which Staufner Haus is located) are all very beautiful, a soft dusky grey with big dark eyes, and they all wear cowbells. I can’t describe the sound of a large herd of cows all wearing cowbells chiming different pitches but it’s very beautiful. Cowbells on cows is a common practice in Europe from what I’ve seen (the first that I encountered were in Italy) and I find the sound so soothing. However we did notice that the cows were very interested in Mammut! In the first field, which we walked through, he and René were followed by two or three cows. It was quite funny to see – René and Mammut would speed up a little to get away, and the cows would speed up to stay close. When we walked past a second field full of cows, half a dozen of them came to the fenceline to look at Mammut. By the time we walked past the third field of cows, his effect seemed to have amplified – every single cow in the field came running down to the fenceline, jostling for position and bellowing loudly. I’d never seen anything like it! Poor Mammut seemed quite overwhelmed – he hid behind René. We later found out that cows see some dogs (especially large dogs like Mammut) as a threat, and their response is to form a wall or be otherwise intimidating so that he doesn’t get any ideas. Not that Mammut would hurt a fly anyway! But it sure was an interesting phenomenon to watch.

That evening was the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen in my life. I was lying in bed (it was such a long walk, it really took a lot out of me!) when I noticed that the grass outside my window had gone bright pink. I was just getting up when René burst through the door saying I had to come and look. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful! It fact it was so lovely that we’ve since printed out a photo of it and have stuck it onto one of the cabinets in the van, so we can enjoy it every day.

Monday 17 June: Meeting with Tobi

By the time we’d been living in Staufner Haus for a week, René and I had made up our minds to stay there for the rest of the summer, if possible. Although we’d come to Europe so that René could work as a tandem pilot, the one year stand-down period on the Austrian license was a major spanner in the works and we didn’t have any contacts for getting a German license. And life there was great – we were flying on our days off (René took Gudrun, Karol, Anil and Natasha for tandem flights), and spending the bad weather days playing Settlers of Catan (a favourite board game of Lukáš’), playing with Mammut, and eating delicious traditional German meals, cakes and strudel. We were under the impression that Lukáš was understaffed for the remainder of the summer season, so staying wouldn’t be an issue – but when we mentioned it to him, he regretfully told us that he only needed short-term staff, as he had two new staff members joining the team in August. This was such a shame to hear, but we adapted and soon came up with a new plan. René had the contact details of a pilot running a tandem company in nearby Oberstdorf, 10km from the Austrian border – perhaps he could fly for him. So just a couple of days after we’d received the news from Lukáš, we drove 40 minutes to the tiny village of Bolsterlang, to meet Tobi.

We parked in the carpark of the Hörnerbahn gondola as directed, and waited inside the terminal for Tobi to arrive. The plan was that we would go up the gondola and shadow Tobi for a couple of flights – he was flying tandem with customers, and René would watch the interactions, discuss with him how the business model works, and of course fly a couple of tandems with me to demonstrate his skill. Tobi was perfectly punctual, and not at all like I’d pictured him – I always expect tandem company owners to be in their 40’s at least, but Tobi is only 4 years older than I am. He’s a warm and outgoing man with thick brown hair in a style reminiscent of Albert Einstein, and I liked him immediately.

We all squeezed into one gondola car (4 people and 2 tandem gliders, you can bet we were squished!) and watched Tobi go through the paperwork and safety briefing with his customer, then we chatted about the technicalities of the site. It was a 5 minute walk from the top of the gondola to the launch, and there was already a good launching wind and a couple of tandem pilots there. As we were setting up they both launched with their passengers – forwards. Any pilots reading will understand how odd this was to witness – forward launching is used almost exclusively by beginner pilots, as anyone with any ability to control the wing will find it easier (and safer) to use the reverse-launching technique. But anyway, René and I harnessed ourselves in and took off. It was a nice flight with some good thermalling over a nearby ridge; and we waited until Tobi had landed, then did some acrobatics over the landing field and topped it off with a nice smooth landing, using the advanced technique called “swooping”. As we went back up for our second flight, Tobi lamented the abilities of many tandem pilots in the area. The German tandem license is apparently very easy to get, with the result that it’s granted to a lot of pilots who don’t have the skills to fly tandem. He told us that the reason for the two tandem pilots forwards-launching was almost certainly that they didn’t know how to reverse-launch. I was amazed.

The second flight went even better than the first, and Tobi took videos of René’s launch and landing to show to the other owners – he co-owns the company, Vogelfrei, with two other pilots. One of the other owners, Shelli, was working at Nebelhorn that day, and the other owner, Manu, was currently competing in the Red Bull X-Alps, as he had also done in 2017 and 2015. I’ve mentioned this competition in my previous post – the X-Alps are like the Olympics of paragliding, and only the top two pilots in the country are able to enter. Vogelfrei’s motto is “Tandemfliegen mit profis” (Tandem flights with professionals) and René and I definitely realised the calibre of pilots in the company when we found out about Manu! After a third flight, Tobi, René, and I went for a late lunch at a small cafe in the village, along with another Vogelfrei pilot that we’d bumped into on landing, Jonas. Tobi told us, over bowls of carrot and ginger soup, that he was pleased with what he’d seen and would be very happy to hire René, but he’d have to consult with Shelli first – Manu, in the X-Alps, would be completely incommunicado for two weeks. He said Shelli would give René a call soon, and we headed back to Staufner Haus tentatively hopeful.

Thursday 20 June: XC 25km

A few days after our meeting with Tobi, the weather was looking good for a spot of cross country. René and I had planned to fly to Nebelhorn and hopefully back, although with quite a strong prevailing wind pushing towards Nebelhorn I wasn’t holding my breath for a return journey! We launched from one of the lower, north-facing takeoffs – with the exception of our first couple of flights from Hochgrat, we’d used this takeoff exclusively, and I was glad for it as it was a much easier (and significantly less rotor-y) launch! René thermalled up and was gone in a flash, but I had a much harder time of it. The prevailing wind meant the thermals were drifted and hard hang on to, but eventually I made it to cloudbase (there’s no feeling quite like flying into the bottom of a cloud!) and set off for the next ridge to the south. For most of the glide to the ridge I was in severe sink, meaning I arrived with much less height than I’d have liked to, and to make matters worse as I followed the ridge I couldn’t find a single thermal. I ended up scratching (that’s paraglider-speak for trying to thermal up but not managing it) on the east face of Oberstdorf valley, close to Hörnerbahn and below a ridgeline. I was sure that I was done for, and would have to land out, when by the mercy of the wind I found a decent thermal and managed to climb back up – over 1000 vertical metres. From there I jumped further east, over the town of Oberstdorf to the magnificent mountains that rise behind it. I arrived just over Rubihorn, in spitting distance to Nebelhorn – and the views were absolutely spectacular. I flew right next to the peak, close enough that I could have shouted hello to the hikers atop had I chosen.

I was so excited to continue on and see Nebelhorn – and who knows, if I could keep going, maybe I could try for my 60km open distance – but it wasn’t to be. I didn’t catch another thermal from there and went down, down, down, across the Nebelhornbahn cables and finally landing at the Nebelhorn LZ (landing zone) in Oberstdorf. It was full of cows – definitely not usual for a landing field – which was cool, because it’s a novelty and I had to be really careful about the exact spot I touched down in, but also not cool, because when I brought my glider to the ground it fell into a big pile of what I like to think of as “reconstituted grass”.

Total distance: 25.69km

Total time: 1 hour 29 minutes

Flight data and 2D tracklog

3D tracklog

On landing I ran into Tobi and Hannah, a friend of the Vogelfrei pilots whom I’d met briefly the day that René did his “job interview” with Tobi. Tobi gave us the excellent news that Shelli would call René that evening, and Hannah very kindly gave me a lift to the Fischen train station. From there I hitchhiked to Immenstadt, and from there it should have been a simple train ride to Oberstaufen, from whence René could pick me up (of course he’d flown to Nebelhorn, flown all around it, and then flown back to Hochgrat valley and landed beside the car). Unfortunately for me it didn’t go so simply! I needed to take the train to Lindau at 1645, and when I saw it pull into the station I hopped into the last carriage. Imagine my surprise when the train started moving in the opposite direction than I expected! I thought maybe I’d just gotten spun around, so I asked a family sitting opposite me, who assured me in no uncertain terms that this train was definitely not going to Lindau. So I hopped off at the next stop, waited half an hour for a train back to Immenstadt, then waited another 15 minutes for the train to Lindau. Turns out the four-carriage train that arrives at Immenstadt station is then split into two trains – carriages one and two continue onwards to Lindau, while carriages three and four head back to Oberstdorf. Definitely an easy mistake to make!

So eventually I made it to Oberstaufen. René picked me up, we had a couple of beers at a nice pub in the village of Steibis (between Oberstaufen and the Hochgratbahn terminal), then met Anil in the terminal carpark, who’d brought the quad bike down for us. And René had a great time driving us home on it! Oh, the logistical challenges of paragliding…

Epilogue

That’s about it from our time at Staufner Haus! It’s hard to sum up what a special time we had there, and how nice it was to get into a rhythm of life. That’s definitely something you lack when you’re unemployed and live in a van! Although the van life isn’t quite so depressing as that sentence made it sound. The only other important thing to mention was that Lukáš wife, Kateřina, gave birth to twins shortly before we left – David and Karolina, making them a family of five with their 2-year-old daughter Sara. We never saw Kateřina or the twins except in photos, but we did meet Sara for a couple of days before we went. Usually the whole family lives at Staufner Haus – the only reason that Kateřina wasn’t there during our stay was because she was heavily pregnant and the accessibility of Staufner Haus could have caused issues were she to go into labour while she was there.

René got the promised call from Shelli, inviting us for coffee the next day in Oberstdorf. He’s another lovely man, in his late 40’s or early 50’s by the look of it, and loud and full of energy. We had a great time chatting about how Manu was doing in the X-Alps and René’s plans for a bivouac (more on that below). And towards the end we talked about René’s start date with Vogelfrei and how to navigate the bureaucracy of working at a German tandem pilot. So it turned out that our Plan A, to come to Europe for René to work as a tandem pilot, has worked out after all! We honestly weren’t expecting it to by this point so to have it turn around for us has been fantastic.

We left Staufner Haus just as the European heatwave, which has been in the news so much lately, was beginning. The extremely high pressure had the potential to cause some incredible conditions, so I planned to go to Bischling for another shot at my 60km. In the meantime René planned to bivouac across the Alps. This is a very intense (and very cool!) subsection of the sport – where one flies as far as one can, then lands, camps on the mountaintop, then launches the next day and keeps going. You have to fly with a sleeping bag, mattress, food, water, everything – and it all has to fit into a harness pocket (think ultra small and lightweight) and you have to carry it all on your back if you have to hike. Extreme! As a side-note, the Red Bull X-Alps are essentially bivouacing, where you fly from Salzburg to Monaco, only you have a support team as it takes a couple of weeks and it’d definitely be impossible without them. I hope to get into bivouacing one day, but not for several years. So we planned that I would drive to Bischling, and he would fly to Vienna over about 3 days, and I would meet him there and we’d drive back to Czech for his aunt’s 50th birthday party (the reason for us leaving Staufner Haus in the first place).

But that whole adventure is for another blog post! I’m slowly eating away at the backlog  (only two-and-a-half weeks behind now!) so with luck I’ll have another post for you in a few days 🙂 stay tuned!

I must begin with an apology. For such a long time not much was happening, and then when things finally started to happen I was too busy doing things to write. Back in Czech Republic, all the courses René and I were supposed to go on were cancelled, and then I didn’t manage to make it to Poland as I’d intended – I didn’t think to book my tour of Auschwitz in advance and so when I went to book it the night before I found they were full until the following week. But about a month ago René and I left the Czech Republic to live in our little van and have adventures. Our first adventure was a week in the Austrian Alps, in a tiny village called Werfenweng nestled underneath the beautiful mountain Bischling, about 40 minutes drive from Salzburg. It’s a popular spot for paragliders, and there’s a flight school based in the village at which René had organised to make the requirements for his Austrian tandem license.

Friday 31 May: Arrival at Werfenweng

We drove most of the way to Werfenweng on Thursday evening, to avoid the hideous European traffic, and parked up overnight at a small camping spot just off the highway, about 15 minutes from the town. Of course it had been so dark while driving that we couldn’t see any of the landscape, and I was blown away when we woke up, got out of the van and saw where we were! We had stopped right in the middle of a mountain pass, with incredible steep cliffs rising up all around us. A short drive later and we arrived at the flight school. The scenery was absolutely stunning – so stunning I forgot to take any photographs! Google to the rescue…

At the flight school we met the tandem pilot Sebastian, his lovely girlfriend Lissi, and the two instructors (and brothers), Stefan and Josef, the latter known as Sep. Sep explained how the license would work – René would take a tandem with me, then sit a practical exam on his solo glider, then complete 10 tandem flights (usually they require 40 but his 800+ commercial tandem flights lessened the requirement). So we took the gondola up the mountain (€26 for a day pass, ouch!) and did a great flight, complete with SAT – an advanced acrobatic manoeuvre similar to but significantly more challenging than a spiral dive (if you’re curious, here’s a short YouTube video).

After that we went back up so René could do his solo exam, and I could have a flight. This was very exciting as the day previously I had bought a new harness! It’s a Chogori Ultrino which was for sale second-hand (but only 30 hours of use) at René’s flight school in Czech, a pod harness (meaning the pilot’s legs are covered and stretched straight out for comfort, warmth and aerodynamics). I had intended to buy a new wing before buying a new harness but it was so beautiful and comfortable and for such a good price that I went for it. René quickly switched my emergency parachute from my old harness to my new one for me and then we headed back up the gondola.

Launching in a pod is much more challenging than launching in a regular harness as you have a lot of fabric and a polycarbonate board flapping around your feet as you try to run! But I managed it (perhaps not very gracefully!) and was in love as soon as I managed to wriggle myself into the harness properly. So comfortable! So warm! And so much ability to weight-shift! Weight-shifting is extremely important for steering, especially for advanced wings – arguably more important than the brakes. My old harness was very much a beginner’s harness, built for safety rather than efficacy, and its weight-shifting ability had been a joke. It was overcast, meaning there were no thermals and the flight was short, but it was still a fantastic flight, with beautiful views of the Alps.

I landed happy and was just chatting to René and packing up my gear next to the landing field when an older pilot came towards us. As it would happen, his reason for this was his interest in my harness! He had been flying 20 years and struggled to find a lightweight pod harness that gave him the lumbar support he needed for long XC flights. The three of us talked about the harness while he examined it and he left very impressed, with the name of the website where he could buy one in his head. It was such a lovely feeling! It’s one thing to have a new toy and be in love with it, but quite another when a very experienced pilot has such a high opinion of it as well.

After this René took a tandem with a student from the flight school while I flew and then we did another tandem together – 3 tandems down, 7 to go! That evening we walked into Werfenweng to explore. Just as Bassano del Grappa was aggressively Italian, Werfenweng is very traditionally northern-Alps-ish – huge plaster and wood buildings with wooden balconies and shuttered windows.

We ended up in the bar of one of the hotels, chatting to the very nice Hungarian bartender named Gerri, then wandered back up the hill to the van. That night we slept in the carpark of the Barbarahof hotel; as my middle name is Barbara I really felt at home!

Saturday 1 June: Tandems tandems tandems!

The next morning we got up early to get started on our tandems. It was a very tiring day! Ride up the gondola, unpack the wing, clip in, fly (short flights as it was still overcast), land, pack up, walk back to the gondola, repeat. The first 4 or so were fun but after that I think we both started to get tired. However, in the late afternoon the high cloud finally cleared, just in time for our last flight. Finally some thermals started to rise and we flew for an hour! It was a phenomenal flight – I had been admiring the beautiful Tennengebirge mountains since we arrived in Werfenweng and we flew all around them, even getting high up enough that we could see the plateau above it. We took some lovely photos and videos as well.

Sunday 2 June: XC 66km

On Sunday morning we woke up early to hike up Bischling with an aim to go cross-country. The hike included the dual benefits of helping with our fitness and saving us the €14 fee for a single trip up the gondola. Unfortunately we got a bit lost and ended up bushwhacking a couple of times (I feel like I’ve told this story before!) but eventually we made it to the top. It was a stunning day – a huge anticyclone was sitting over the Alps and the sky was a crystalline blue with the first fluffy cumuli just starting to form.

My aim was to fly the 60km open distance flight which is required for my advanced pilots license. Generally speaking, open distance is defined as 60km across three turnpoints, and you’re not allowed to land where you started otherwise it’s a triangle rather than open distance. So from launch I planned to hop to the south across a large valley, then hop across another large valley to the west, and then continue west to Zell am See. This is a small town on a lake in the Austrian Alps and from the west of it is Pinzgau valley, well-known to many paragliders as one of the best XC valleys in the world. It runs 30km east-west with a straight ridge on the northern side (facing south into the sun) which, if it’s a thermic day, is always working with great thermals. If you can get over the ridge, you can just fly straight without needing to stop and thermal up – the air there is rising so smoothly and consistently you’ll maintain your height or even gain a bit simply by flying forward, allowing any pilot who can make it there to fly fast and far with minimal effort. My route to Zell am See was already about 40km long, so if I could get there then getting the remaining 20km would be a breeze. The only thing to worry about would be getting back home when I landed!

However, disaster struck on launch when I realised I didn’t have my variometer (usually called a vario) with me. This handy device beeps when you’re in lifting air – the more high-pitched and faster the beeps, the faster you’re climbing. It’s essential for XC flights for obvious reasons – if you’re a kilometre above the ground you can’t tell if you’re going up or down just by looking at the nearest hill. Usually René’s spare vario lives on my harness and I use that, but we’d taken it off the day before to use it for the tandems, and when we’d finished our last flight he gave it to me and I put it in the pocket of my flying jacket; but on launch I searched all my pockets and my glider multiple times and it just wasn’t there. My hopes for getting my 60km were pretty much gone when I discovered this, but I decided I’d give it my best shot anyway. Luckily, with the flight deck on my new harness I had space for visual instruments. I always fly with the orange mobile (René’s old one which got almost destroyed by malware) in my pocket, to record my flight tracklogs, but the same app that records the tracklogs also has an option to display flight data. So I attached it to the flight deck of the harness and hoped that the altimeter (which would show me my height above sea level) would be able to partially negate the loss of the vario.

We launched at around 11am and I lost René pretty much immediately (there’s no way I can keep up with his glider, especially without a vario!) but I had plenty of fun flying by myself. The altimeter turned out to be a gamechanger – thermalling up was very challenging with it close to the ground, but when I was high enough that visual reference wasn’t possible I could just watch the altimeter like a hawk and use it to find the best lift. I successfully made the first big jump across the valley to the south, arriving low and spending a lot of time trying to regain the height I’d lost, but eventually managing it. From there I made the jump to the west, and once I had done that I knew the hardest parts were behind me. However, I also realised I needed to use the bathroom and I was only 15km into the flight. But I pressed on, towards Zell am See. As I got closer to it the thermals got more and more violent. This flight was definitely the most turbulence I’d ever flown in, but as I was flying my nice safe BGD Wasp which I know like the back of my hand, and I was so high above the ground, I wasn’t concerned about it.

As I neared Zell am See I started to meet with sailplanes, and even a couple of powered planes, which was very disconcerting! I’d never flown with either before – sailplanes aren’t so popular in NZ, and powered planes and gliders will never be in the same airspace due to our regulations. The sailplanes in particular were huge and moved so quickly, it was strange to share airspace with them. I just had to keep an eye on them and remind myself that they are VFR (visual flight rules) aircraft like me, and that they have to give way to me as I’m piloting the smaller and slower aircraft. Generally speaking they gave me plenty of space although there were a couple of times when one came about 100 metres from me and that was a bit stressful! 100 metres might seem like a lot on the ground but when you’re in fast-moving aircraft 100 metres is nothing. The powered planes thankfully kept their distance, which I was very grateful for – they’re IFR (instrument flight rules) aircraft, which means the pilots could be spending more time looking at their instruments (checking radar etc) than looking at the air in front of them.

The last valley jump of my flight was across Zell am See town, which is in a large valley with steep sides. I went into it nice and high and arrived at the famous Zell am See ridge with plenty of height to spare. By this point I was desperate to land and find a bathroom but the orange mobile was telling me I’d already flown 45km open distance – just 15 more kilometres and the task would be complete. I decided to turn back a couple of times (as I could still get 60km across three turnpoints if I flew 45km west then 15km east) but then changed my mind and pressed on westwards along the ridge. 50km… 55km… 60km! But still I kept going a little way, just in case the orange mobile had some inaccuracies. When I reached 65km I turned out into the valley and back the way I’d come (to decrease the distance needed to hitchhike), and did two long spirals to try and lose my height, drifting back towards Zell am See in the strong valley wind. I eventually landed having completed a 66km open distance flight over 3 turnpoints, but felt a sense of foreboding when the orange mobile told me I’d flown just 55km. However, a little bit of looking into it made me realise that that was the straight line distance, not the open distance, so it should be nothing to worry about. I sent the tracklog to my instructor in New Zealand to double check but prepared to celebrate that evening anyway!

Total distance: 66.44km

Total time: 3 hours 23 minutes

Flight data and 2D tracklog

3D tracklog

Unfortunately I seem to have lost the footage from this flight so there’s no YouTube video this time 😦

I hitchhiked from the village where I landed to Zell am See, where I took the train back to Werfen, a few kilometres from home. René came to pick me up, we bought some nice wine, and headed back to Werfenweng for an evening of celebrating. Finally, the dreaded 60km flight, the biggest barrier to my on-time completion of the advanced license, ticked off the list!

Monday 3 June: chores

The next day was flyable as well but I decided to sit it out. This was due to a combination of being exhausted (physically and mentally) from the day before, the weather forecast showing a number of excellent flying days to come, and the fact that I desperately needed a shower and to charge some of our electronics. So I hung around the flight school, used the shower there, and met some more of the staff – including a lovely woman called Stephi, who was once on the support crew for the Austrian X-Alps team! That’s like being the pit crew for Formula 1, but with paragliders. René was flying because somehow his muscles have this superhuman ability to not be sore the day after a challenging hike. But I had a lovely time watching students at the flight park, catching up on email, and chatting to Stephi when she took her breaks from her work (giving the school gliders their annual technical check).

However, this pleasant day of rest and relaxation was badly marred by a message from my NZ instructor. Unfortunately the NZHGPA (our national association) uses a definition of “open distance” that’s unique to the organisation, which is that the distance is calculated across two turnpoints – no other organisation in the world that I know of calculates open distance this way. Meaning that I had only flown 55km according to the association, and my celebration had been premature. To say this was a blow doesn’t really cover it – I was devastated. The kicker was that I would have had the 60km, only when I hit the 65km mark I decided to turn back for my descent rather than continue forward to descend, just so I had 5km less to hitchhike. No-one had told me – no instructor I’d ever spoken to – that the definition of open distance according to the NZHGPA was different than that according to the international standard. I’d looked on the website for their definition weeks previously in an attempt to avoid this exact situation, but there was nothing available, so I’d assumed they used the international standard definition. The document my instructor later sent me, showing the NZHGPA definition, is not available to the public. I spent a lot of time ranting about this to René, who was just as incensed as I was, with the result that we really just spent several days ranting the same points back and forth at each other. But regardless! Rant over. I’ll move on.

By the end of the day I was suitably physically refreshed (albeit very angry about the bad news) and ready for another attempt at my 60km flight the next morning. René landed a few kilometres away and I went to pick him up; when we got back we discovered some other campers close to us, and what a surprise to find that not only were they paragliders, but René had taught one of them how to fly! They were two very nice Czech men named Jiří and Petr, and the four of us spent a pleasant evening chatting before an early night, ready for a big next day.

Tuesday 4 June: XC 29Km

On Tuesday morning we were up bright and early, ready to hike up Bischling. I drank a lot of water when I woke up and then resolved to use the bathroom immediately before launch and not drink until after the flight – this is René’s strategy to avoid in-flight bladder issues. Jiří and Petr hiked with us – the four of us took a different route from the one René and I took on Sunday, which was much steeper but also involved much less getting lost and bushwhacking, with the result that we were on launch by 10am (just 90 minutes of hiking). As it wasn’t yet peak season the gondola was only operating on the weekends, so the four of us had the launch to ourselves. We launched and I took the same line as I had two days previously. I thermalled up quickly and made the jump across the first valley with ease. However, I had a horrible sense of bad things to come when I felt the urge to use the loo during that first jump, just 20 minutes into the flight – apparently my metabolism was still processing the water I’d drunk 4 hours earlier. But I pressed on, hoping that maybe it wouldn’t get so intense that I couldn’t fly; but it wasn’t to be. By the time I’d made jumped across the second valley I was wriggling around in my harness, and I landed just a few minutes later on a steep slope, having flown only 29km. I was so frustrated!

However, I didn’t lose hope yet. I packed my glider and started to hike up, hoping that I could find a launchable spot somewhere close above me, thermal up, and have another shot at it. But two hours later, having fallen in mud, fallen in stinging nettles, being dehydrated beyond belief and still too low to launch and thermal, I was forced to concede defeat. I begged some water from an elderly Austrian couple living in a cottage on the hillside, and then launched and flew to the bottom of the valley, landing next to the main road. That landing was the highlight of the day – it was in a field full of yellow, pink and white wild flowers, and sloping gently downwards, with the result that I skimmed just centimetres above the flowers for probably 30 metres before I touched down. I felt like a fairy! It’s wasn’t too difficult to get a hitchhike to Bischofshofen, about 15km from Werfenweng, and then René came to fetch me in the van as I was too dehydrated and exhausted to walk to the train station – what a gem!

That evening we hung out with Jiří and Petr, drank wine and discussed our flights. René had flown around 140km (having flown his personal best of 163km open distance the day before) and Petr had almost managed 200km open distance that day. I just listened and tried not to be bitter!

Wednesday 5 June: Salzburg

The next day was looking flyable but René and I had some chores to do in Salzburg. The most important of these was meeting with a possible future employer, Wolfie. He runs a tandem company operating at Mount Gaisberg, on the outskirts of Salzburg – the gliders are easily visible from the central city, meaning that business is good! He was a very nice man, showing us the landing field and explaining how the business works to René as we took the bus to the launch.

Side note, this is the only site I’ve ever come across with a public bus going to the launch! In NZ you can usually drive to launch, but then you have the logistical issue of landing at the bottom with your car still at the top. In Europe there are rarely public roads to the launches – instead gondolas and chairlifts are omnipresent, and always charging exorbitant amounts for a single ride. Not Gaisberg! €2.60 for one ride in the bus, or for €5.20 you can get a day pass, and ride it as many as 7 or 8 times. Much better than Bischling, that’s for sure! At the peak is a restaurant, parking lot, and not one, not two, but three launches, facing north, east, and west respectively. The only wind direction you can’t launch in at Gaisberg is a southerly, which is fine as the Alps are like a wall to the south so it’s not a common wind direction. Airspace is fairly restricted on account of Salzburg Airport, except to the southeast, where you can fly all the way to the Alps. So in short, this is an exceptional site. Extremely easy access, launchable almost all the time, close to a major centre, but still with cross-country potential. As you may be able to tell, I’m in love!

Wolfie wanted to see René fly his solo rather than his tandem, so we each went for a flight. It was a swelteringly hot day, but the air was lovely and thermic and not too turbulent – perfect for a laidback flight! We were flying in singlets, shorts and bare feet, and it was a wonderful way to cool down. You know how on hot days all you want to do is jump into some nice cool water? Well paragliding pilots don’t get that urge – we want to jump into some nice cool air instead. I even took my DSLR camera – it fits in the flight deck pocket of my new harness – and took some great pictures!

When we landed, Wolfie offered René a job for next season, which René accepted. Wolfie would have offered it for this season but unfortunately the Austrian paragliding association dictates that a pilot has to have their Austrian tandem license for a year before they can work as a tandem pilot. But still, this was very exciting news! A lovely team of people at a lovely site, and able to offer a good number of flights per month. Afterwards we did our few chores in Salzburg and then drove back to Werfenweng to celebrate a very successful day.

The next day wasn’t flyable so we did some chores and planned our next move. I’d been worrying about money for quite some time – 2 months of travelling with no income does terrible things to one’s savings. So we decided to head to Germany, to stay with a friend of René’s who runs a mountain hut there. We figured that could be our base for a few days while we looked for farm work, or perhaps I could distribute CVs in the nearby towns in the hope of finding a dishwashing or housekeeping job – I’m in Europe with a German working holiday visa, so if I want to work it’s Germany or nothing, and as I speak no German whatsoever my employment options are pretty limited. At least we could stay at the hut for a while and work for our food and board, meaning my finances would at least stop going down for a little while even if they weren’t yet going up. So the day after we said a fond goodbye to Sep, Steffi and all the other lovely people we’d met, and left the Austrian Alps, bound for the German ones instead.

That’s it for this post! I have two more still to write but I’m in a position now where I should be able to write much more than I’ve been able to write the last few weeks – I won’t tell you why that is or where I am, I don’t want to spoil the story! Coming very soon: all of our adventures at Staufner Haus, Germany. Stay tuned 🙂

Welcome back everyone! Unfortunately there hasn’t been so much to report on lately. René and I had two paragliding courses lined up, a SIV (acrobatics) course jointly taught in Czechia and Austria as well as a cross-country course taught in Italy, but the weather all the way across Europe has been terrible for the past couple of weeks so both courses were cancelled. We’ve been relaxing in Vyšní Lhoty, going for long walks and seeing friends, including my dearest friend and co-worker from New Zealand, Jiří. He’s home visiting family, same as us, and as it happens his hometown is just 45 minutes drive from Vyšní Lhoty. What were the odds I’d end up with a Czech boyfriend and a Czech best friend, and that all three of us met in New Zealand (pretty much as far away from Czechia as you can get), and that the two of them came not only from the same remote region but from villages just 40km apart? It almost defies belief!

Anyway, on the odd days when the weather’s been good for flying we’ve been out there giving it a shot. Specifically, we’ve been going cross-country – my first forays into the section of the sport which has always attracted me most. Not only is cross-country particularly appealing to me, it’s also a requirement of my advanced pilot’s license that I complete cross-country (usually abbreviated to XC) flights – either one 30km flight in NZ, or three 20km flights in NZ, or one 60km flight overseas. So on the two recent days with XC potential we headed to the hills with the aim of flying as far as we possibly could.

This post is dedicated to my best friend Mia, who wrote to me saying she was loving my blog but really wanted to see some of the videos from the flights I was doing, and suggested that I set up a YouTube channel (seeing as WordPress won’t allow me to post videos). It’s a brilliant idea and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it, so you all have Mia to thank if you enjoy the videos!

11 May: Skalka, 28km

Our first XC attempt in Czechia was on a beautiful, if slightly windy, spring day. Having a prevailing wind can be a blessing or a curse for XC flying, depending on your goal. If you’re hoping to go for a big loop and end up where you started (the most challenging kind of XC flight, called a FAI triangle), then a prevailing wind is the last thing you want, as going one way will be very easy but coming back will be extremely challenging. However, if you’re just trying to go as far as your possibly can (in the lingo, “open distance”), then a prevailing wind will help you fly fast and far, as long as it’s not too strong – if so it’ll blow the thermals away, and thermals are the most important prerequisite for XC flying. Luckily for us, on 11 May the prevailing wind was strong but not too strong, and the air was unstable (meaning hot in the valley but cold in the sky – so the hot air rises up quickly, creating fantastic thermals). Perfect for us! The wind was westerly, so we headed to a site called Skalka, as it was the closest launch facing into the wind. I’d never flown there before – it was a very steep half-hour hike to the top and my lungs were burning but it was a small price to pay for the flight I was about to have!

The launch was absolutely packed – I’m always astounded by the number of paragliders on launch here, sometimes as many as forty or fifty pilots trying to prepare their gliders (keep in mind these range from 20-45 square metres of fabric each). Hardly room to swing a cat! But René and I managed to find a little bit of space, clipped into our harnesses and got in the queue for the launch area. He went first – a perfect launch as usual – then it was my turn. The wind was fairly strong coming up the hill, meaning it should have been a nice straightforward launch. Unfortunately, one of my wingtips ended up with a cravat (meaning the wingtip was tangled through the lines) when it was spread out ready for takeoff, and due to the way it had been spread I couldn’t see it. So I brought the wing up, and the right tip was all messed up. But there were a lot of pilots on launch and I really didn’t want to have to put the wing back down to fix it unless I absolutely had to – looking at the cravat I assessed it, assessed the amount of space I had to the right of the launch (knowing the glider would want to turn that way if I launched with the cravat), and decided that as it wasn’t a large cravat and I had adequate space to my right, it wasn’t a serious enough issue to warrant aborting the launch. I would fly, counter with the left brake, and then fix it immediately once I was in the air by pulling on the stabiliser line, a line of the glider designed for fixing cravats mid-air. As soon as I began to launch all the pilots behind me started shouting, clearly under the impression that I hadn’t noticed the problem, but in no time I was in the air, and within five seconds I’d gotten my hand on the stabiliser line and pulled it until the cravat came out. Problem solved!

At least two dozen pilots were thermalling nicely to my left so I went to join them – all of us circling counter-clockwise like we were caught in a gigantic slow-motion tornado. The thermals were strong – at my maximum I was rising 4.6m/s – and so punchy that I had two asymmetric collapses (where part of the wing loses pressure and deflates) because I wasn’t paying enough attention. I held on tight and rode the thermals up until I got to the height where my fingers were numb, then set out on glide to the next hill, across a valley several kilometres wide. Generally speaking, thermals form on hills and ridgelines – it’s possible to find them in the flatlands, but they’re usually weak and difficult to ride. So for XC flights where it’s necessary to cross valleys, the aim of the game is to get as high as you can over one hill and then “jump” as quickly as you can across the valley to the next one. This one was a very wide valley and my low EN-B (low intermediate) glider is made for safety, not for gliding long distances. I began the jump 1500 metres above the ground, and when I finally got to the other side I was just 250 metres up. This put me in a position where if I didn’t find a decent thermal within 3-5 minutes, I’d have to make an emergency landing on the closest field. Luckily, when I was so low that the ridgeline was almost above me and all hope seemed lost, I found a decent thermal and managed to ride it 1200 metres back up, all the way to cloud base and even spent a bit of time in the lower layer of the cloud. In the paragliding world, that’s what we call a low save!

From there I went for the next jump – this valley wasn’t so wide and I made it across with plenty of height, although it was so cold that even with my two pairs of gloves I had to take my hands off the brakes and put them under my legs to try and warm up. You’ll never know cold pain until you paraglide at high altitude – your hands get so cold that they don’t feel cold at all anymore, but instead like someone’s been hitting them repeatedly with a hammer. The warming up process from that kind of cold is even more painful then the cold itself – I’ve never cried midair but I’ve cried from pain on landing when I took the gloves off! Anyway. I flew over Vyšní Lhoty, where René and I are staying with his grandparents, and saw their house like a tiny matchbox in the village. I thermalled over the hill next to the village, Prašiva – René and I often walk it or take our campervan up to spend the night there, and it was very cool to see it from a different perspective! From there I pressed on towards Javorový, where the flight park is, hopping across little valleys as I went, and finally catching up to René. Unfortunately at around this time my GoPro ran out of battery so I missed out on video of the last part of the flight. I managed to get to Javorový hill, but as soon as I did I found myself going into a headwind – for some reason that neither René nor I could figure out afterwards, the westerly suddenly turned into an easterly, and we both sank out of the sky like lead balloons. I made it to the flight park landing field and managed a graceful landing; René wasn’t quite so lucky and landed in a field a few hundred metres away.

Total distance: 28.96km

Total time: 1 hour 28 minutes 

Flight data and 2D tracklog

3D tracklog

YouTube video

The 3D tracklog is absolutely the best thing since sliced bread. If you only look at one of the links, look at that one! Make sure to click “stats” on the right-hand side to see interesting information like my groundspeed, altitude and climb rate.

18 May: Straník, 22km

Our second XC was from Straník, in Slovakia. We’re staying right in the far east corner of Czechia, close to the borders for both Poland and Slovakia – Straník was maybe 1.5 hours of driving, if that. We didn’t want to drive there ourselves – flying open distance XC causes huge logistical issues, in that we could be 20, 40, even 60km away in a different country while our van would still be sitting in the paragliding launch carpark! So René called around and found some people who were driving there – they picked us up from the town of Frydlant nad Ostravici, about 20km from our house. When we arrived, the wind was so strong that I resolved not to fly – it just didn’t seem possible to get off the ground. A few pilots flying EN-C (advanced) or EN-D (competition) gliders were managing it, but they were struggling – and one out of every two attempted launches would end with a pilot being dragged by their glider. But we watched for a while and René pointed out the wind was coming in cycles and that if I picked my moment right I should be okay. So we set up and I launched first – I was fairly confident with my ability to pick the right moment, but wanted him to reassure me it was safe. The launch was actually pretty easy, and before I knew it I was soaring back and forth across the hill. Unfortunately, I couldn’t seem to gain much height – the strong prevailing wind was blowing a lot of the thermals away. As well as that, with at least 50 pilots in the air simultaneously in a very small area, I spent most of my time trying to avoid collisions rather than focussing on finding a thermal. Even when I did find them, I couldn’t turn in them as there would be 3 or 4 pilots directly behind me and if I turned I’d fly straight into them. Spoiler alert, mid-air collisions almost always end in the death of both pilots – you really don’t want to take chances with that. Definitely not the best conditions – I ended up landing half an hour later, but decided to head back up and give it another shot.

My second launch is one of the launches of which I’m most proud, out of all the paragliding launches I’ve done in my life. As I hiked to the launch site, I was passed by several pilots walking down with their gliders, and when I got to the launch itself I realised the wind had gotten even stronger than it had been earlier. Only tandem pilots were launching, no solo pilots – and as they often told us in paragliding school, tandem pilots will launch in conditions which are extremely dangerous to less experienced pilots. While I waited two solo pilots attempted to launch – both were dragged badly, one of them right off his feet. But I watched the windsock and streamers, and decided if I picked the right moment I’d be okay. So I carefully set out my glider, held the brakes so tightly that the glider was completely crippled, and when I thought the time was right, I went for it. And sure enough the glider raced over my head, I pulled just the right amount of brakes at just the right time, and with two steps I was off the ground. I was so proud!

There were even more pilots in the air than on my first flight, and I came very close to some of them – close enough to feel real fear of a collision. But this time I moved back a bit from the ridge and managed to find a thermal which I had space to turn in. I followed another pilot all the way up, drifting strongly with the wind, away from the landing. As I was thermalling up I hadn’t decided whether I wanted to go XC or not. If I didn’t then I could go back with René’s friends in the van (leaving at 3pm), but if I did attempt it but didn’t manage to fly back to Czechia I’d be stuck in Slovakia, with no Euros (just Czech crowns), and also no knowledge of any Slavic languages, and somehow needing to hitchhike back home despite not knowing the language, potentially as far as 70km. But eventually my choice was made for me – the prevailing wind was so strong and I’d drifted so far that I had no choice but to continue on.

My goal was to get to Javorový – it was 60km away, so if I managed it I would complete the requirement for my advanced pilots license. But it wasn’t to be. The prevailing wind was so strong that after I left my first thermal I didn’t find another one – they were all blown away. Furthermore, very worryingly, the conditions were overdeveloping to the east. When the thermals rise high enough they turn into clouds, and if it’s a hot day with unstable air then the clouds can get bigger and bigger and bigger until they take on a life of their own, forming enormous thunderclouds which suck in the air around them at speeds of up to 40 metres per second. This is the cause of the late afternoon storms that often occur in spring and early summer. The word for this process in the sport is overdevelopment, and as you can imagine it has the potential to be extremely dangerous – the fastest a paraglider can go down, in a spiral dive, is about 10 metres per second, so if you’re too close to a cumulonimbus you stand no chance against it, and once sucked in the strong winds and freezing temperatures can soon prove deadly. I’d never flown in the vicinity of a serious overdevelopment before this flight – not one but two clouds were overdeveloping badly, just a few kilometres east of me, and moving steadily in my direction. Furthermore I knew they’d soon join together into one enormous cumulonimbus, with exponentially more power than the two clouds had had separately.

I was flying north, over a series of ridges running east to west. I had planned to fly over the eastern ends of the ridges, as they were higher (so more likely to produce good thermals), but with the two storms moving my way from the east that was no longer an option. So I stayed over the western end, watching the storms carefully, constantly checking my direction on the ground to make sure I wasn’t being sucked into them sideways – if that were to occur, I’d spiral dive down immediately. I didn’t end up being sucked by them at all, thank goodness, but with the wind strengthening all the time I also didn’t end up finding any thermals – they’d all been blown away.

With the strong prevailing wind I managed to glide a very decent way, landing in a large open field next to the main highway. As it turned out, René had landed just a few kilometres away, in one of the side valleys, and had his thumb out trying to get to the main highway. I managed to pack up my glider just in time before the heavens opened and it started to pour. Luckily I got a ride in less than 5 minutes, with a nice Slovakian man based in Switzerland named Ondrej. He had been visiting his parents in Žilina (the city which the Straník launch overlooks) and was on his way to visit his grandparents in Ostrava, the major city 20km west from Frýdek-Místek, so was able to give me a ride all the way there. He was delightful man with excellent English and by the end of it he had invited René and I to stay with him if we ever made it to Saint Moritz. From Frýdek-Místek I got the train back to Frydlant nad Ostravici, where we’d left the car, and drove it home. René ended up waiting a long time in Slovakia for his ride, but eventually he got one, and made it home at about the same time as I did. All in all, not a bad day!

Total distance: 22.72km

Total time: 59 minutes

Flight data and 2D tracklog

3D tracklog

YouTube video

NB: Unfortunately the tracklog data for this flight is slightly corrupted for some reason, showing me sometimes flying at groundspeeds of up to 180kmh! World’s fastest paraglider, coming through…

So that’s it for now! This weekend René has a two-day first aid course in Olomouc so I’m taking the van and heading to Poland to visit Auschwitz and Krakow, and I’ll write all about it when I’m back.

P.S: If you’re interested in seeing the video from my short XC flight at Bassano del Grappa in Italy, that is also available on my YouTube channel.

René and I have just finished up an incredible trip to Praha. What was intended as a quick 3-day stay to avoid a nasty storm coming through our town turned into a 5-day stay where we saw just about everything Praha has to offer and took two trips into the nearby countryside to see notable landmarks there as well. I really ought to have been writing while I was there as I’m sure I’ve forgotten so much already but there simply wasn’t time with all of the fun we were having!

Saturday 4 May: Arrival in Praha

We left Vyšní Lhoty early on Sunday. One bus to Frýdek-Místek, then a train to Ostrava, then a train to Praha, brought us to the capital around mid-afternoon. It was absolutely freezing with rain coming in sideways like icy daggers when we arrived, but thankfully our friends Aja and Seňa (with whom we would stay the first two nights) didn’t live far away. This lovely couple stayed with us in Queenstown earlier this year, and it was wonderful to see them again. That evening we went for a walk around Praha with them, taking in the sights. The apartment buildings were all so beautiful and ornate, it was almost unbelievable – decorated with classical statues of naked women, while birds and vines framed every window. We got our first views of Praha – including the famous Prague Castle and St Vitus’ Cathedral – from one of the parks we wandered through.

Eventually we ended up in the local pub where we sampled a number of excellent Czech beers, then went back to Aja and Seňa’s apartment to drink some more excellent Czech beer, and then we slept like rocks after a long and exhausting day.

Sunday 5 May: Walking the Tourist Trail

On Monday we set off with the intention of seeing all the most famous sights of Praha. The sheer volume of tourists in the central city is intense – at times it was hard to move. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the Praha Marathon was taking place, so many streets through the city were closed to the public as part of the track. But everywhere we looked there were stunning old buildings towering over cobbled streets and it was just beautiful.

Our first stop was the famous Wenceslas Square, the heart of Praha. At the top, enormous and majestic, sits the recently-restored National Museum. This was shot at and damaged considerably by the Soviets when they liberated Praha in 1945, believing the building to house Nazi-controlled broadcasting equipment. The renovations, including new gilding of the dome, were only completed a couple of years ago. Just below the museum sits an enormous statue of St Wenceslas, the patron saint of Czech Republic, on his horse. The square isn’t quite as busy as Times Square, but it’s not far off!

In Wenceslas Square we saw a wonderful busker, playing a keyboard with a horse-head mask. I took a couple of photos of him; when he noticed he pulled out a mirror and pretended to adjust his mane, which I found hilarious. When I put 10 crowns in his cup he whinnied so loudly and realistically that everyone in the vicinity turned to stare. René and I were in stitches.

Next on the list of must-see places was the old town square, home of the famous astronomical clock. I don’t know how you read the time from it but it sure is beautiful! The marathon was running pretty much through the square and as René and I both despise crowds we made a hasty exit.

Next up was the Charles Bridge. It was covered in buskers, stalls selling Prague souvenirs or offering caricatures of tourists, and of course, plenty of the tourists themselves.

Across the bridge we wandered up the main street. Again, very beautiful; again, full of tourists.

As we were walking up the main street, we ran into a couple of familiar faces. Andrzej and Natalia were a Polish paragliding couple staying at the site next to ours in the Bassano del Grappa campsite last week – what were the odds of seeing them in Praha?!

We stopped for lunch on a park bench nearly at the top of the hill and had our usual snack (bread and hummus) overlooking the city. Then we ran into Andrzej and Natalia again, and then we finally made it to the Prague Castle. This isn’t so much a castle as a smaller city inside Prague! In addition to an entire marketplace, it also boasts a post office, three churches (that I could count) and multiple restaurants. Honestly, from the inside it just looked like another part of Praha – the same cobbled streets and buildings that were actually much plainer than many I’d seen in the city. It was my first time in a “castle” and it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting! But c’est la vie. We had the option to pay several hundred crowns for tours of St Vitus’ Cathedral or one of the many exhibitions or tours in the main castle, but decided that we were happy just wandering around the outside for free. FYI for NZ readers: 1 New Zealand dollar is worth 15 Czech crowns. The trick is to divide the number of Czech crowns by 10 and then subtract one third of the remainder. My mental arithmetic has been improving in leaps and bounds since we arrived!

After that we wandered over to Petřín, the park next to the castle. This is rimmed by the so-called Hunger Wall, commissioned by Charles IV (one of the most important Czech historical figures) and built from 1360 to 1362. When a famine hit in 1361, it started to be called the Hunger Wall, as its continued construction provided livelihood for the city’s poorest residents. Petřín is also home to Petřín Tower, an Eiffel Tower lookalike boasting some of the city’s best views (but too expensive and touristy for us) and also a cable car just like the one in Wellington! I’d never seen or heard of a cable car of that style anywhere else in the world and seeing it was like seeing an old friend unexpectedly.

We wandered slowly down the hill, eventually coming to the suburb of Kampa. We were to meet Aja and Seňa here for coffee, but as we wandered we also came across a traditional májka erection. This is a Czech tradition in which a small pine tree decorated with streamers and then bound to a long pole is erected on the first of May, and then chopped down on the last day of May, to celebrate that summer has arrived. Because they’re Czechs, both the erection and the destruction of the májka are caused for plenty of drinking, as well as traditional folk dancing in beautiful costumes. When we arrived there were a couple of people in traditional clothes, but most of the dancers were simply passers-by who had been drawn in by the music and atmosphere.

Coffee with Aja and Seňa was a welcome break to our tired feet. Afterwards we wandered back towards their flat, seeing more beautiful buildings on the way.

We picked up dinner things and cooked for the four of us as a thank-you to them for their hospitality. We were intending at that stage to spend the next night with René’s cousin Standa and then head home the next day, although it didn’t really work out like that!

Monday 6 May: More of Praha and meeting Standa

The next morning we headed out early with all our things on our backs, intending to meet Standa that evening. I had my heart set on seeing the Klementinum, a complex which houses what purports to be the most beautiful Baroque library in the world. René and I got our tickets for the guided tour and it didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately they won’t let you take photos of the Klementinum Library, but there are plenty on Google!

The library was open to the public until World War II. First it was closed by the Nazis, then by the Communists, but thankfully it survived both epochs, and is now accessible only to historians with the necessary authority, dispensed by the Minister for Culture. Tourists are permitted to stand just inside the doorway. Nonetheless, it was an incredible feeling to drink in the splendour of that beautiful space.

During the tour we also climbed the Klementinum Astronomical Tower, originally the place where high noon was determined daily by use of a camera obscura and signalled to the citizens of Praha by the waving of a large handkerchief. Today it gives beautiful views of the city from 52 metres above the ground.

After the Klementinum tour I finally bought myself a trdelník, a “traditional” Czech pastry which really only became a thing about 20 years ago for the tourists of Praha. There were stalls selling them just about everywhere we went but I hadn’t had the chance to buy one; I spent most of the first day trying to pronounce the word and René joked that I wasn’t allowed one until I could say it, and I struggled but got there in the end! The pastry is wound around a metal bar and then slowly cooked over charcoal and coated in cinnamon sugar. René and I enjoyed ours with melted chocolate on the inside. It was delicious but (on account of the melted chocolate) probably one of the messiest things I’ve ever eaten.

René had been in touch with Standa throughout the morning and after the Klementinum tour we went to meet him. He lives in a beautiful apartment just around the corner from Wenceslas Square – right in the very centre of Praha. He let us into the apartment so we could leave our packs and ease our aching shoulders, then gave us keys and disappeared to attend a previous engagement. René and I lounged around the apartment – I think it’s the most wonderful apartment I’d ever seen, the exact place I’d want to live if I were to live in a big city like Praha. Just two rooms, but light and airy with white walls, white mesh curtains, and chandeliers hanging from the high ceilings. I was very jealous!

Social butterfly Standa had a party to go to that evening as well, hosted on a boat cruising up and down the Vltava River, and he managed to swing tickets for René and I. I’d been thinking how wonderful it would be to see Praha from the water but knew that I’d hate to be trapped on a boat with a bunch of tourists. So this was a very fortuitous twist! It was a costume party, although we came in the only clothes we had. We had bought a small bottle of slivovice (traditional Czech liquor made from plums) to smuggle on board, knowing the cost of drinks there would be exorbitant, only to find that security guards were patting everyone down and searching bags before they could get on the boat. So we found a party-goer dressed up as a fat man with a pillow under his shirt, and he stuck the bottle under the pillow and found us again when we were on board! For the rest of the night we had a wonderful time drinking, chatting, dancing and watching the view.

When we got back to the dock Standa continued on to the afterparty and René and I got a kebab and then collapsed into bed.

Tuesday 7 May: Visiting Nelahozeves

We had our train back home booked for 9:47 on Wednesday morning. Standa had been saying the previous day that we simply must stay longer, so that we could take a trip to Karlštejn Castle together, 30km from Praha, but we’d been equally insistent that it was time to get back to Vyšní Lhoty. But waking up the next morning, with a poor weather forecast for home and Standa still insisting that we should stay, we changed our minds. So the train tickets were cancelled and we cooked a lovely breakfast together of scrambled eggs, toast, coffee and juice. Standa’s idea was that we go to Karlštejn the next day, and spend that afternoon in and around the village of Nelahozeves, home to famous Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s birthplace as well as the beautiful Nelahozeves Chateau. So we bundled into the train together and were soon at the tiny village. René and Standa took some time to pose with a statue of the titular character from the famous Jaroslav Hašek novel, The Good Soldier Švejk.

We walked along a beautiful path beside the river, stopping for a quick beer on the way, before arriving below the chateau. Nelahozeves Chateau was built in the late 1500’s and is one of the best-preserved instances of Renaissance architecture in the world. The frescoes on the outer walls of the chateau, although damaged, were just stunning.

Unfortunately we had arrived too late to participate in a tour, but we enjoyed looking around the courtyard and read all of the information that was available on the various signs. We also ran into the two tour guides leaving work, and they told us the brief history of the chateau. It has been owned for nearly all of its life by the extremely wealthy Lobkowicz family, who also own a number of other castles, chateaus and palaces around Czech, including the Lobkowicz Palace next to the Prague Castle. William Lobkowicz, the current heir of the family, was around the chateau while we were there – we’d noticed a man in an expensive suit when we arrived, and wondered what he was doing there. Turns out he comes to the chateau every day from Praha, in a chauffeur-driven car, to oversee the management. The three of us spent a lot of time wondering what his life must be like – being that wealthy, and part of a family that owns 11 castles.

Afterwards we looked in on Dvořák’s birthplace, but as it was almost 6pm by this time it too was closed. So instead we wandered upriver until we came across a traditional Czech pub. We had dinner here, which was a mistake – when we asked about vegetarian options we were assured the bean soup was vegetarian, and were happily enjoying it until René bit into a piece of sausage. René and Standa both complained to the staff about this and were yelled at for it – the staff said they should have known that they would just take the sausage out of the soup. Vegetarianism isn’t a big movement in Czech and clearly it’s not well understood. It’s hard to explain what it’s like for a strict vegetarian to eat something that’s had meat in it (even if you don’t actually eat a piece of meat itself), but I felt dirty and ill and betrayed. To say that their actions were unethical doesn’t even come close. I’d never experienced something like that before.

By the time we arrived back at the Praha train station René and I were exhausted. I noticed, particularly in those last two days of the trip, that every day we were waking up more and more tired, regardless of how much we’d slept. I think the overstimulation, so many new and interesting and beautiful things, and so much walking, really drained us over time. Standa had a party to go to again but ultimately he was too tired as well, so the three of us stayed home and watched a movie.

Wednesday 8 May: Karlštejn Castle

The next morning we were up bright and early to take the train to Karlštejn Castle, a Gothic castle founded in 1348 by Charles IV, the same Charles who built the Charles Bridge and also founded Charles University in Praha, the first university in Central Europe (this was also founded in 1348 – it was a big year for him!). I’d seen the Prague Castle (which in my mind hardly counts as a castle) and the Nelahozeves Chateau but Karlštejn is a proper castle – the kind where fairytales are set.

Karlštejn village was very touristic. We bought a postcard to send to Babička and Dědeček as well as some traditional Czech potato chips, as the main road slowly wound its way towards the castle. We also stopped for lunch at a little pub – the boys ordered the soup but after the day before I wasn’t feeling very trusting! And finally, we reached the castle.

René and I got tickets for the most extensive tour – the only tour to include the famous Chapel of the Holy Cross – while Standa, who had already done every tour at Karlštejn, decided his time would be better spent at the pub. So the three of us headed back down the hill a bit to kill time drinking a beer before the tour started. Czech beers are usually served as 50% foam, 50% beer, which is very different to what I’m used to – at my Queenstown waitressing job I’d get in trouble for serving any beer with more than 10% foam! As Czechs are aware of this, beers for tourists are usually poured at a slightly better ratio (60:40 or 70:30) and although I hated all that foam at first, I’m honestly starting to like it now!

Our tour began at 5pm. The tour guide’s name was Martín and both his English and his knowledge of the castle’s history (and Czech history in general) were excellent. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take photos while inside the castle, which was a shame as there were many beautiful things to see. We spent some time in the Church of the Virgin Mary on the second floor of the Marian Tower, where the walls were covered in 700-year-old frescoes of holy figures and of Charles IV himself, and which contained the tiniest pipe organ I’ve ever seen in my life. We also saw the adjoining St Catherine Chapel, the walls of which were completely covered in semi-precious stones – this was Charles’ special place for prayer and meditation.

We heard about the attempts of other nations to capture the castle through the centuries, although none of them had ever managed to take it. The stairway leading up the Great Tower was also covered in beautiful frescoes, every part painted – even the ceiling. And the crown jewel of the tour (almost literally) was a visit to Chapel of the Holy Cross, on the second floor of the Great Tower. Here, behind four doors with 19 locks (the keys to which were all kept separately), were originally housed the Czech Crown Jewels and the Imperial Regalia. The walls are completely covered in semi-precious stones as well as 129 Gothic panel paintings, the greatest collection in the world, depicting holy figures, saints, bishops and popes; and the ceiling is pure gold with a pattern of stars, representing the holy realm above. As soon as I stepped into the room I was overwhelmed. I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life; it gave me goosebumps. If you are ever in Czechia, you must go to see this chapel. Photos cannot do it justice; to be in that space was, for me, a life-altering experience.

The Chapel of the Holy Cross was the last spot on our tour, which is a good decision on the part of castle management because after you see that nothing else can possibly impress you. Standa was waiting for us when we got out, and we enjoyed a final beer and told him all our thoughts about the incredible tour. And then it was back to Praha.

The next morning we were up early to catch the train back to Vyšní Lhoty. Standa walked with us to the train station and we said very fond goodbyes. The trip had been absolutely incredible, we saw and did so much and it was especially wonderful to be able to spend so much time with Standa – he was the most hospitable of hosts. It’s René’s aunt’s 50th in a couple of months time – an excellent excuse for a gathering of the extended family – and we assured him that we’d see him there.

In three days René and I go back to Italy, this time to Pieve d’Alpago for a cross-country course. I’m hoping that while I’m there I’ll be able to make a 60km flight, a requirement for my advanced pilots license which I’m desperate to achieve. Stay tuned 🙂

René and I have just returned from Italy! We were there with his Czech flying school, El Speedo, for a thermalling course – him as instructor, myself as assistant instructor. We had such a wonderful time and saw and did so much, it’ll be hard to pick the highlights for this post! But I’ll give it my best shot.

Friday 26 April: Driving to Italy

The journey from Frýdek-Místek to Bassano del Grappa is around 12 hours of driving. El Speedo chooses to do this overnight as during the day it’d be about 16 hours with all the extra traffic. So René and I were picked up from the designated spot at around 6pm on Friday night, and the long drive began. We split it three ways – Tado, the other instructor, took the first four hours (the Czech leg), René the second four hours (the Austrian leg), and I took the final four hours through Italy. The Austrian highways were bigger than I’d ever seen – four lanes each way and deserted at that time of night. The street signs pointed out exits going towards Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, and of course Italy – very surreal to me! We drove through so much beautiful scenery, especially in Austria, and I was sad not to be there in the daytime. The van was a 9-seater and I’d never driven anything so big in my life, especially at 2 in the morning, especially on the other side of the road, on winding Italian country roads! But I managed it alright. When we arrived (at 5 am) we set up our sleeping bags in the field next to our campsite (the camp registration being closed at that time of night) and fell asleep instantly.

Saturday 27 April: First flights

The weather was flyable on Saturday. Shortly after waking up, René was walking to the campsite, and I ran to catch him up. When I did, I looked up and saw a building that stopped me in my tracks. The phrase that came to mind was “aggressively Italian”, and really that sums up all of the buildings in the village.

We checked in to the campsite, set up our tents, then loaded all the gliders back into the van and headed up to the first launch – there are several on Monte Grappa so I’m referring to them by the order in which the road arrives at them. Monte Grappa is insanely steep and the hill up involves 28 hairpin bends – for any readers familiar with the lower Crown Range road, it made that look straight by comparison. Standing on the launch felt like standing on the edge of a cliff! My job involved taking plenty of photos for the El Speedo website, which I was happy to do.

There were so many gliders in the air all the time – the most I counted from landing was 81. It meant the launches were very crowded! One thing that really surprised me was the level of incompetence on the launches. On the one hand there were pilots doing their line check on launch, which for a busy site is a big no-no – in that situation pilots should do line check beside the launch, clip in, then mushroom the glider and carry it to launch so it’s all ready to go and they’re not taking up valuable launch space. And on the other hand I saw more pilots than I could count completely fail to brake their gliders (causing frontal collapses and therefore failed launches), inflate their gliders asymmetrically (also causing failed launches), inflate with cravats or line-overs (again, failed launches), or just be dragged by their glider on launch because they didn’t think to hold the brake lines even though the wind was strong. There were pilots flying EN-D (competition class) gliders and still making these amateur mistakes. One pilot even managed to get their glider stuck in a tree before they launched. I was amazed.

I had one lovely flight – the thermals were strong and punchy, typical springtime conditions, and it wasn’t hard to stay up. When everyone had landed we went up for a second flight. Although the course we were teaching was meant to be a thermalling course, that first day it was a lot like an elementary course – for many of the students it was the first flights of the season, and only a couple of them had much experience anyway. René had to talk each pilot through launch, and they usually required multiple attempts. We had three older pilots with us as well, including brothers Marek and Jacek. 75-year-old Marek had a bad fall on launch that first day, dislocating his shoulder – mercifully, not too badly. Flying was over for us for the day as René drove the brothers to hospital.

I took advantage of the free time to do some housekeeping at the campsite and go for a walk around the village. As I said, all of the buildings were aggressively Italian – cream or yellow walls with terracotta roofs, wooden shutters over the windows with planting boxes full of flowers or herbs on the windowsills. There were livestock and olive trees everywhere and the roads were narrow and winding.

Towards the evening, we drove the van to Iper Toscano, the “hypermarket” in downtown Bassano. Hyper doesn’t even begin to describe it – I almost had a panic attack from visiting it, I was so unprepared. Imagine the biggest supermarket in New Zealand, then triple it in size and put in six times as many people. Imagine aisle after aisle packed with bottles of Italian wine for NZD$2, 10 litres kegs of wine for NZD$10, whole fruit pies for 99c, and half a kilo of parmesan for $3, and every aisle also packed with people jostling to get the items they need. The cheese section in particular I found overwhelming – the sheer volume and variety, not to mention the prices.

With René still at the hospital with Marek and Jacek, I picked out some food for us for that evening’s BBQ and hastened to the self-checkout. I felt I had to get out of there or I might collapse or something – the scale of the shop, its obviously foreign nature, and the number of people were too overwhelming to me.

The BBQ was lots of fun – we had roasted brie and delicious fresh bread. People were mostly speaking Czech or Polish but I’m pretty much used to it at this point. And then, with stomachs full of good Italian cheese and wine, we slept.

Sunday 28 April: Venezia

On Sunday we awoke to pouring rain, flashes of lightning and thunder so loud it made my ribcage rattle. René had to get up early to drive Marek to a doctor’s appointment and I enjoyed staying in my sleeping bag, warm and dry, listening to the storm rage against the tent. But eventually I had to get up. Rain when you’re camping is one of the worst things – you know that once you get wet, you’re not going to get dry again for a very long time. We had a quick briefing under the marquee next door and decided that, with the weather forecast showing rain for at least the next 12 hours, the best choice was to head to Venezia. We took the train – apparently parking in Venezia is an absolute nightmare, which doesn’t surprise me seeing as it’s probably one of the only cities in the world with no roads through a significant part of it.

When we arrived to the Venezia station it was pouring harder than ever and absolutely freezing. We’d just walked outside and no sooner than René could say “we should buy umbrellas”, we had an umbrella hawker fall upon us, offering them for 5 euros. Thus armed we headed into the storm. Trying to keep my camera dry and take photos while holding an umbrella was as much of a nightmare as it sounds. But even as we got wetter, colder and more miserable, the beauty of Venezia was absolutely undeniable.

Eventually the cold and wet overcame us, and we stopped for pizza and coffee at a tiny cafe. To our intense pleasure, when we emerged the rain had stopped. I had been appreciating Venezia with 50% of my mind earlier, with the other 50% being occupied with worrying about how dry my camera was and cursing how wet my feet were. With the rain having stopped, I could appreciate it with 100% of my mind. My God, it was so beautiful.

We left having spent around 4 hours in the city, as we had to get back for our dinner reservation. I really felt that I’d barely scratched the surface and I desperately want to go back – ideally this year, but if that’s not possible then definitely soon.

It was still raining in Bassano. We had a dinner reservation at the aggressively Italian restaurant next door and enjoyed the warmth and dryness immensely.

The food was excellent – pizza, of course – although the service was probably some of the worst I’ve ever had. They didn’t even supply wine glasses with our wine, we had to drink it from the water glasses! But we still had a wonderful time.

Monday 29 April: The weather cheers up

On Monday the clouds were still threatening rain and the wind was too strong to fly. We went to the plateau at the top of the mountain, to a hippie farm/cafe hybrid that René loves. The owners were unfortunately out but we had fun meeting the animals and René gave a thermalling theory talk. It was very interesting to be there: only half of the course attendees speak Czech, but luckily Jacek works as a translator for Czech, Polish and English. I had the pleasure of watching him as he translated what René was saying into Polish in real time. Very impressive!

Afterwards, we went to the second-highest takeoff. The wind was just coming right and everyone got into the air for a flight. I took my camera with me and took some lovely photos from the air.

All in all, it was another lovely day.

Tuesday 30 April: Tree rescue

Tuesday was an excellent flying day, with incredible thermals – perfect for a thermalling course! To my irritation, I was the only pilot who didn’t fly – I spent the day driving, while Tado and René had a flight each and the students had several. But that’s life.

Grzegorz, one of the students, managed to get himself stuck in a tree near the farm we’d been at the day before. This irritated René as, during the briefing the previous day, he’d explicitly said that no-one should be flying over that area as there was always rotor there and also there’s no place to land. So of course the next day Grzegorz is at the top of a 25 metre pine tree there, with no cellphone reception, no radio reception, and a chainsaw going nearby so no chance to shout for help. He detached his harness from his glider (number one rule if you’re stuck in a tree – don’t detach your harness from your glider) and luckily managed to climb down successfully, then went to the road and managed to get enough cellphone reception to text René. So we went to meet him with the tree rescue kit and René climbed to the top of this pine tree on these tiny spindly branches with no safety system should he fall. Then when he got to the top he roped himself to the tree, and spent an hour and a half sawing through branches to get the glider free.

I was very happy to have René safely on the ground again when it was over. We went to Iper Toscano again that evening and you’d better believe we got a couple of bottles of nice red wine to relax with!

Wednesday 1 May: Cross Country

Wednesday was the final day of the course. Like the previous day, it was perfect flying conditions; unlike the previous day, I actually got to fly in them! I did my first ever serious cross country attempt, following René along the ridge. We thermalled up to over 2000 metres above sea level – a long way, given the launch was only at 820 metres! In fact we thermalled all the way to cloud base, which is generally speaking as high as paragliders can go, as that’s where the thermals condense into liquid and stop rising. It was my first time ever to fly there, and it was so beautiful to watch the clouds forming all around me. There was deep snow on the mountains below us and it was so cold I thought my fingers would freeze off. We could see all the way into the Italian and Austrian Alps, all the way to Venezia, and all the beautiful mountains and hills and villages in between – to say it was stunning doesn’t even begin to cover it. I made a short highlights reel that you can view here.

Then René turned around to head back to Bassano to land, and so did I, and he (on his high-C glider) penetrated effortlessly into the headwind, and I (on my low-B glider), sank out of the sky like a lead balloon – at one point I was sinking at a rate of 3 metres per second. I limped my way to the flatlands and managed to catch a couple of weak thermals, allowing me to get a bit closer to landing than I otherwise would have been, but still landed a few kilometres away from where I was supposed to be. I managed to hitchhike back without too much trouble though, with a lovely Italian woman about my age, who said I was the first hitchhiker she’d ever picked up. She dropped me right to the landing field; then it was back to camp to pack up the tents, then to the gelateria for a celebratory gelato (René and I had cremino, a subtle hazelnut gelato with a nutella swirl – absolutely delicious and the creamiest icecream I’d ever had), and then we started driving.

This time I got my wish to see the beautiful Italian and Austrian Alps. I was open-mouthed – such remote valleys, in New Zealand pretty much inaccessible, but here filled with enormous highways elevated above the ground, leading to huge tunnels. And the mountains were so steep and forbidding – I loved it.

This time I took the middle driving shift – about 9pm to 1am. Due to the earlier time, easier roads (I got the Austria section) and the fact that I was much more familiar driving the big van, I found this journey much easier to handle. René drove the final section, and I slept with my head on his lap the whole way back to Czech. We drove the van right to Babička’s house, said fond goodbyes to Tado and all the others, and then fell into bed where we proceeded to sleep until midday. The End!

I’ve written this on the train on the way to Prague, so in a few days I’ll have all that to write about. Stay tuned 🙂