Flying tomorrow?

I’m optimistic! As soon as I woke up this morning, I could see from my bedroom window that there was mist hanging around the tops of the trees in Bejamin and Aurelie’s garden. So I wasn’t surprised when I looked out of the front of my house to find that I couldn’t even see beyond the end of the field opposite, let alone the hillside on the opposite side of the valley around 5 miles (8 kms) away. In fact, it was a dull, damp miserable morning and it looked as though there might even have been an unforecast shower of rain during the early hours from the look of the water on my car and garden furniture. We’ve been spoilt recently with temperatures as high as 21 and 22 degrees Celsius but whereas today’s forecast was for a high of only a more modest 15 or 16 degrees, it didn’t look as though even that was going to be reached from the way the day started out.

But blow me down, just as the morning was coming to an end, there was a sudden burst of bright sunlight, and when I looked out, I was surprised to see another virtually cloudless blue sky. I thought that this was quite an encouraging sign because whereas recent mornings have started out bright with a mist over the ground, they’ve stayed that way all day and the mist has hung around reducing the visibility to a level not low enough in itself to make flying unsafe but still bad enough to reduce the level of enjoyment so much as to make it not worth it. But today the sun had been enough to burn away what more or less amounted to a light fog, so maybe it might end up being able to clear it completely? Well, we did end up with our promised 16 degrees and although a tiny bit of mist did linger, it was nothing like as bad as we’ve experienced lately. I went out for a drive later on in the afternoon and the day was so nice that I took a few pics.

The first couple of shots are of views from the end of my road. As the signpost says, you turn right for Plazac and left for Thonac and Montignac (and Galinat too if you’re heading that way).

Looking straight ahead down the track towards the chateau on the far hill, you’d usually see the TV mast at Le Bugue many miles off in the distance. No chance of that with the mist today, though, even though the visibility was much better than in recent days.

I turned left towards Thonac and then right a mile or so down the road to head for the Cote de Jord. The road there runs along the wooded ridge of the hillside and at one point there’s a short stretch with signposts in both directions with the warning ‘Parapentes’. That’s because paraglider and paramotor pilots run from a gap on one side of the road across the road itself and take off by hurling themselves off the hillside and into the valley below. They don’t then plummet down to the valley floor, of course, but instead soar skyward in the ridge lift afforded by the wind when it blows from a southerly direction. Nobody there today, though, because the airflow was northerly and presumably the lift was non-existent.

However, the view from near to where they take off from was spectacular, as the following images show.

Galinat is not visible, but is situated over on the far hillside, and as well as taking in a sweeping loop of the Vézère river, the view also includes the villages of St Léon sur Vézère and Sergeac. My new little Panasonic camera has a ‘panorama’ setting and I’ve shown below the shot I took of the same view using it. To make the most of it, you need to click on the image to take it up to its full magnification.

It’s dark now as I type this, but when I looked out earlier, not only could I see the hillside that has Galinat on it, at a distance of 5 miles (8 kms) but also the rock quarry near Terrasson that’s about 13 miles (22 kms) away. The latter hasn’t been visible for quite a few days because of the poor visibility but if it’s still visible tomorrow, then things will have improved quite a bit. I’m optimistic that it will be, so with a bit of luck I’ll be flying in 56NE 😉