Serres 17.1

Most of the guys from the Cerdanya trip went home but there was still left me, Mike and Neil McLaughlin. The weather forecast suggested Serres would have better weather, and it was on the way home for Mike and Neil so we decamped to Serres.

We had a couple of duff days to wait before a nice strong Northerly set up. Mike launched first and got into wave very quickly. I launched half an hour later and had a bit more of a struggle in rotor over Aspres before connecting. Moving up to Pic de Bure the wave was varying in form but for a few minutes I could watch the altimeter wind up in an average 14 knots of silky smooth lift.

Pic be Bure wave

The three of us got together, I contacted Salon to check the airspace was deactivated and we then rode the bar down South West to overhead Mt Ventoux and back. Neil went in to land leaving Mike and I to move East out of the wind into weak therms out to Jouerre and back.

Cruisin' in the wave bar down to Mt Ventoux

Day 2 was a bit blue but worked pretty well with therms to 12,000' in the hot spots. We flew South West on to the Luberon then East over to Siguret near Barcellonette, with the opportunity to pick out most of the airfields in the Southern French Alps. 6.5 hours of this and at least one of us was feeling a little tired!

Overhead Siguret in the Barcelonnette valley

Day 3 was 8/8 overcast and a 15kt Southerly - rubbish. However, we launched anyway and ended up having a really great flight. The Aportres ridge was working very well so Mike could practice dropping down to the foot of it and working his way back up: good exercises to get used to looking up at 2000' of rock as you scrape up it. After a while we trickled over to the Cretes des Selles and ridge ran across past Malaup on to Jouerre and climbed up to the 8000' cloudbase in wave enhanced thermals. From there we nipped over Sisteron to the West and found a wave gap over the Meouge gorge and climbed up to 10,000' between the overcast. A neat 5 hour flight that was great mountain flying training for Mike.

Departure day - leaving at the right time?

So ended a fabulous three weeks training with my son. I really enjoyed flying with him and was pleased with how he flew - always having a landout option in mind, thinking about Plan B if the next climb didn't work and keeping a clear picture of the topography and what valley went where.

I then set off back to the Pyrenees and the SGP at Santa Cilia, Jaca. Mike went back to the UK to train with his Juniors team mate ready for competitions in Germany, France and Lithuania. Vot haf I created???!!