On the final day of our Superfinal trip, we were invited to Aphrodisia. The home city of Aphrodities, visited by Socretes and his mates. We flew a mountain a few k's away and I was lucky enough to get high and forward to fly right over the city ruins. A free lunch and a free trip round the ruins ended a great trip out to Turkey.

Flying over the salt/lime formations Pamukale

Comp 6 The World Cup Super Final. Turkey.

This was a veritable Who’s Who of competition Paragliding. Every person you spoke to was the Champion of something. The Team member of their country, the designer or test pilot top wings. It was an honour to fly amongst them, until the sods starting crashing into me!! There were mid airs all the time on every task; the flying was aggressive to the degree of stupidity. The launch mountain was cross wind so the R10 dance was a sight to see. Our own Adrian Thomas tripped on launch, hitting a rock face first, missing task 1 and getting 40 stitches in his upper lip for good measure. He soldiered on, but I’m sure he was suffering, especially when he had a mid air on task 6, completely the other pilots fault.

The task setting was questionable to say the least, with strong winds forecast; they tasked us back into 40kph winds!! With classic skies downwind, it was very upsetting to have to turn back into wind, pushing into lee side rotor above shaded trees!!

All in all, 7 tasks of varying quality revealed a worthy winner in the very friendly French pilot Yann Martail. With France winning the countries cup and Petra Slivova winning the women’s list.

For Team UK. Jamie Messenger took a fantastic 7^th, while I was next Brit with a 21^st J. Russ Ogden 51^st, Adrian Thomas 64^th, Craig Morgan 84^th and John Ellison 86^th. Which out of 135 of the Worlds best paraglider pilots is no mean feat.

This is what you have to do to make the British Paragliding Team! 5 or 6 top comps and do very well in them. It’s a lot of dedication and even more skill and bravery.

Even if this does make Skywings, it’ll probably be skipped over to read about someone’s first 10k XC or ridge run in Wales J But to me it’s been great, and the R10? It turned out to be a beauty. Now, planning for the Worlds next year, oh and the PWC’s. The Super Final will be in Mexico! Oh and the British Championships!!!

Here we go again!

Comp 5 The British Open St Andre les Alpes. Every paraglider pilot should fly in St Andre les Alpes!! It is an incredible place, surrounded by the rugged dry mountains of the southern Alps. The views, thermal strengths and transitions are simply breath taking. My family love the mountain biking, via ferratas, white water rafting the Verdon Gorge and swimming in the lakes. This comp was one of the biggest comps of the season with a very high pilot quality and the final leg of the British Championships. Jamie was the man to beat and Craig and I set about doing just that. Another strong team of French pilots could not knock our very own Russell Ogden off his perch as he won most tasks. Pierre Remy and I won the other two tasks, but after 6 scores Russ won the Open, with a brilliant 3^rd spot for a consistent Mark Watts??

The other story lay in the British Championships, with Jamie Messenger feeling the pressure of the chasing pack; he choked at the run for the line. On the penultimate day both Craig and Jamie bombed as I took the lead and won the task from Luc Armont.

11 tasks and 11000 points scored, Craig and I were only 7 points apart. The closest fought championship in history. The final day saw marginal conditions, but I had the lead and with it the British Championships!! Then the call, ‘Task Stopped’ we had to land, but with more than half the task flown, I thought I’d won it! Back at HQ, they were scoring the task…… Yes, I’ve won it!! Only to be told that the score will be used in the Open but not for the British Championships! Some rule in sub section 8b(i) or something, meant a controversial task would upset the controversial discard system, so they would not count it.

Craig Morgan won, with me once again vice champ and Jamie in third. An incredible pull back by Mark Watts, to climb up to 4^th. Adam Hill achieved 5^th and our hearts go out to Chris Harland who flew a blinding campaign but got no luck in his lead out bombs ended in 6^th. A big mention has to go to Emile Van Wyke, flying a Serial Class Gin GTO nicked 7^th place off a comp wing chasing pack and our girl Kirsty Cameron nearly got into the British Top Ten, again on Serial Class Advance Omega 8

THE GERMAN OPEN in FIESCHE SWITZERLAND. (photo by Marin Scheel of Azoom,com)

Every paraglider pilot should fly in Fiesche Switzerland once in their lives!! It is an incredible place, surrounded by the biggest mountains and glaciers in the Alps. The views, thermal strengths and transitions are simply breath taking. My family love the mountain biking, via ferratas hot pools and natural spring water parks. We swept through Europe and I nicked a 5^th place out of the comp and a great family holiday on top.

Phew! and rest.

Sorry for all the silence this last 9 days. It's just been busy, busy, busy!! The final two days of the European Championships certainly shuffled the scores up. The final day was 141k triangle over some incredible high mountain terrain. Thermal strengths so strong at times that you simply held on to your wing until you pinggend out at the top of the World.

I found myself in gaggle 2, chasing the leaders like mad and all of us flying at break neck speed.

Whenever gaggle 1 would take a climb, we'd be chasing under them or their thermal as they would peel off the top! The final leg of the task found us at 3000 meters crossing a wall of Alpine granite that drops 2000 meters off a cliff into Abtenau. It took your breath away as the world fell from beneath you.

More importantly, our final glide looked a long 15k at 10:1 and as we came over the valley I noticed the lead gaggle starting to land short of goal, others disburst in all directions in search of lift. My mind switched on....... get a thermal!! the valley is sinking!! I headed to the final turnpoint and aimed at the sunny spur that offered a bleep or two. I saw Russ take a turn on route so raced at him as he peeled for goal, I took a turn, then did the same. My route in to goal was tracing contour lines, then tree lines, then fence line, then curb stones and one foot to clear the final hill with a sigh of relief to glide over the goal line and get a brilliant 29th place.

My overall final position is also 29th which I'm very pleased with and can now look back on the 2010 European Championships with pleasure.

So download the GPS's, pack up the gear, jump in Bella's Audi TT and race down to Slovenia for the 6 tasks of the British Championships (round 1) Fantastic weather gave us great racing conditions (if a little predictable) I was always in the top ten front gaggle of R10.2's. Strangely enough all the red R10's where Brits and the French Team were on Blu R10's. It became a bit of a visual spectacle of Reds and Blues doing battle in the skies above Tolmin.

The final day found me and Jamie Messenger getting the jump on the others, but Jamie hit an incredible moonbeem just before the final glides, while my moderate 3 meter climb left me tussling with the Frenchies for the line. My daring dive into a tree lined bowl for the final turnpoint was too much for the French, who held back for more altitude. Our speed bar race for the line saw me hold my nerve and the wing to claim second place on that task. A great result finds me third Brit, tussling for the Championship with Jamie Messenger, Craig Morgan and Mark Hayman.

A mad 4 days

It's been total madness since my last blog. Austria eventually stopped raining and we got a couple of great tasks in. Most notably was the 141k triangle on the final day. One of the biggest triangle tasks ever set in a competition. Over huge mountain terrain with eye popping views. Even better I got to goal in 29th place, which amazingly pushed my final position to 29th position. More write up and photos to follow!!

I then drove a Red Audi TT down to Slovenia for the start of British Championships.
Day 1, I came 6th and today I came 5th! If I can maintain this graph I'll come 1st in 4 days ;-)

Not got much time just now but will update and loads pictures soon.