9 hours from Calais and Geoff and I met up in time to put his "tent" up. In truth the "tent" is an enormous structure that doubles as a hangar for ASH25's and comprises East and West wing sleeping quarters, kitchen, drawing room and study. The construction was complete by dusk and a nice cup of tea brewed in time for Klaus and his lead and follow to appear over site at 2115hrs.
Thursday morning dawned a little too early for my tastes as Geoff was at his laptop loading turnpoints into his Cambridge logger at 0600hrs. By 0730 he had realised he'd made a mess of moving to continental time so we went to rig instead.
We launched at 1230 and had a bit of a scratch to get away from site and headed for Grenoble. Things were a bit weird to start with as the cumulus didn't realise they're supposed to mark lift. However, it sorted itself out and we ended up on a convergence running along the Vercors with cloudbase 6500' amsl in the Eastern valley and 8500' amsl on the West. We turned at Grenoble and set the challenge of running 85kms to Sisteron without turning, which turned out to be a doddle and we arrived on the Gache mountain East of Sisteron at 7000' amsl.
Geoff headed for home as he was a little tired (not surprising given the early start!) and I cruised into the Barcelonnette valley, climbed to the 12,000' cloudbase over the Siguret mountain and checked out the oxygen system.
A big shower was blocking off the valley North of Pic de Bure but the glide home was simple and after a limp beatup it was time to land, derig and drive to Nice for the flight back to London and Friday's business meeting. Hopefully I'll be back in Serres Friday night in time for the rest of the gang to show up.
Saturday is forecasted to be Mistral which means ridgerunning fever and wave - yeeha!
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