Wide eyed and bushy tailed
The next day is similar with fair but not epic flying conditions and so we fly around the huge valley at Castejon along with 20 or 30 others again taking turns to tandem and speedglide. The cloudbase is reasonable, about 800meters above launch, the views are Alpinesque and after we land the river is lovely and clean, slow moving with smooth stony banks and a perfect temperature to cool off from the scorching summer sun. Damn its hard being me sometimes. We see a totally stereotypical Spanish horseman dressed in cowboy boots, jeans, long waxed cotton barbour type coat and ten gallon hat on a white stallion doing that dressage thing. He probably thinks he looks pretty cool and to be fair hes probably right. I don’t take his photo though as his head is almost certainly too big already, what with his wide shoulders, chiselled jaw and low bodyfat (what do you mean jealous...have you seen my abs?).
Time though, as usual, is our greatest enemy though and Joe wants to visit a place further south but still in the Pyrenees called Organya next. This is THE place to fly not cross country but accro not only in Spain but possibly the world and is the training ground of the Rodreguez brothers and the S.A.T. team. The brothers and their team need no introduction to those who know anything about accro but for those who don’t accro is paraglidings most spectacular discipline and the first time I saw it as a rookie I thought the whole team had suffered a simultainious malfunction and were about to be smashed into bloody pulp on the mountainside. I had no idea you could do such things on a paraglider. After half an hour of watching these guys at play spinning and looping I knew if there was a way I could learn even 10 percent of what they could do I could be having masses of fun. The brothers, whos father is a paragliding instructor, have been flying since almost before they could walk and between them pretty well invented every accro trick there is from scratch and their child is accro paragliding. They are undisputed undefeated world accro champions so many times(about nine I think) they got bored winning and retired from full time comp to give mere mortals a chance at lifting a trophy from time to time. He doesnt have to try too hard to convince me this is a worthwhile place to visit and we set off that evening.