Good name for a group – don’t you think? But no – just a blog posting about the fact that as the weather seems to be getting a bit warmer day by day, the hangliders have started jumping off the mountain behind our house. See picture.
I can watch them for ages as they swirl and drop and rise and fall with the thermals which are obviously pretty good on Les Courmettes. They must be good because there are a family of buzzards up there in the craggy, rocky outcrops and when the hangliders are out, the buzzards start to fly the thermals as well. I’ve often wondered if the buzzards wait for the hangliders to start jumping off the mountain or do the hangliders wait to see if the buzzards are flying? Or do they both sit there and dare each other to go first?
A few years ago, a group of us went further up into the mountains and several of us went on tandem jumps where you are strapped to the guy actually doing the hanglididng and all you are expected to do, after the initial run and jump, is to sit there, enjoy the experience ….. and pray!
For logistical reasons I could not do my jump (actually it should be ‘flight’) that day and we went back a few weeks later so that I could join the ‘hangliding club’. Unfortunately, there was quite a gale blowing and when we arrived at the launch point, the wind was absolutely howling, which I was sure would mean another cancelled flight.
Hangliding is quite a dangerous sport, starting with the run and jump off the mountain to start your flight. You either take off and fly, or you drop like a stone and I have to say, in some weird, masochistic way, I was looking forward to the thrill and the adrenalin rush as we ran down the mountain and took off ….. or not! However, my flight started as we just stood there on the slope. The wind was that strong, it just picked up the canopy, filled it with air and we were off.
Once airborne, it is deathly (sorry bad use of word) quiet. You just float around, the skill of the pilot being to search out the thermals so that the flight lasts as long as possible. In my case, the flight was over after about 30 minutes which was fine by me as I was beginning to get bored. Once you’ve seen the fields from 2,000 feet that’s it – there’s nothing much else to do!
Our neighbour, René, is, or should I say, was a hangliding enthusiast but unfortunately, the one thing all gliders dread, the loss of a thermal and the collapse of the canopy, happened to him. We had met René only a few months previously when he and Cathy moved into a new house nearby. Then, after seeing René around and about quite frequently, he disappeared. We were told his canopy had collapsed and he ended up in hospital with two shattered legs. After rebuilding his legs with various bits of metal and keeping him in the Cannes hospital for six months, René reappeared to tell us that the worst bit of the whole experience was when he knew he was going to hit the ground and was too low to deploy his parachute. He had to decide whether to land on his back or his legs. Given that he is now considerably fitter than I, and cycles miles virtually every day, I would say that he made the correct choice.
Another hangliding story, albeit a bit more humerous, involved J when we were on a skiing holiday in Serre Chevalier in the French Alps. I cannot remember the reason but I bought her a tandem hangliding flight where you land on skis when you descend at the end of your flight.
Me and the kids went to the top of the mountain to watch her jump off with her ever-so-hunky instructor (actually her take off was a gentle run down a very slight slope into the wind) and then when she was airborne we took the lift back down to the landing station. As soon as the cable car reached the bottom, we put our skis on and headed as fast as we could over to the landing field where we saw the final moments of J’s flight. A gentle float down onto the landing ski slope, the touching of the skis onto the pristine snow and then a tangle of arms and legs as something went wrong. Guy, Kitty and I all dashed over, expecting the worst, only to find J, face down in the crotch of the instructor with a huge smile on her face. It took her all of 5 minutes to extricate herself! Dirty little toe-rag as they say in Glasgow.
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