As its not so far to the comp I decide to leave the Skylark and just drive Lill Suzy over for the day and take a sleeping bag and bedroll in case. There will be no flying anyway as its a tow launch by boat over a lake for the comp pilots only and sleeping out can be fun so I decide not to take a tent. What kind of pilot dosent take his wing anyway just in case becomes apparent later on when people start talking about flying Ager, a mountain about 30k away after the comp tomorrow. Some lead and others follow so I decide I will drive back and get mine that evening and sleep in Organya after the fun is over. The day after qualifying is the first I attend which although the skill level is high sees easily 70% of the pilots hit the water after missing the tiny 5 meter raft in a wind that is strong even for the small accro wings. They are having fun when they realise they wont make it though, helicoptering into the lake. Only 5 pilots hit the raft with the fifth being Felix girlfriend Charlotte. You can guess the others. When I return the following day the succsess rate is inverted however when people get the measure of the lake . Touch and goes on the water with harness, wingtips or both and spot landings included. I spend the day with a mellow buzz orbiting the site, giving and receiving intoxicants of varying kinds, swimming in the lake and in broken conversation in assorted languages . I have spoken in these pages before about what a beautiful thing it is to be so readily accepted so warmly by so many people you’ve only known a week . Paragliding is such a beautiful thing for sooo many reasons. The sky has multicoloured acorn seeds rotating out of it all day some leaving smoke trails as they go.
Later that day when the kit has dried, which dosent take long, five of us get together and go to fly Ager. Francois leads the way ahead of a convoy of 3 cars on the 40 min drive, we leave a car in the landing field before heading up the mountain road to the 1400 odd meter take off. A long limestone ridge with forest on a plateau 300 meters below it which is where I find the thermal that takes me back up the 200 meters or so I had lost after launch over the ridge to be able to scratch in a 100 meter lift band for an hour. A very pleasant and smooth flight although a little concentrated effort was required to stay up 100 meters above take off mostly in a consistent but gradually fading evening surf . I was pleasantly surprised to bump into Mike, a club member from back home on launch and after top landing stop for a natter with him and Toby from Passion Paragliding who I met in Morocco last year. They are here with a small group of happy punters and have teamed up with another group and their instructors for a week or so. I leave it a little long however and as Toby drives off to pick up his group in the landing field Mike tells me before he launches there’s a bit of a backwind building if you’ll pardon the expression and I should go sooner rather than later if I’m gonna fly down. I know he’s right and get set straight up but break a line on a rock running in forward launch mode and have to make do with an easy fly down with a brake line knotted a couple of inches short. It doesnt seem to make any real difference to how it flies though so I just crack on. We eat and chat in the campsite restaurant next to the landing field and all are happy with reasonable flights. We then drive back to the comp.
That night I sleep out with Vincent and Jan, a couple of French guys who are, like me, just hanging out in Organya and learning accro. We build a fire a little way from the tents near the lakeshore which although not so big attracts people with fresh stocks of intoxicants like moths to its flames in a steady rotation till the wee small hours. There’s nothing like a fire for making new friends. When I go to sleep under the stars people are still sitting round and chatting softly in 3 or 4 different languages.
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