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Paragliding in Annecy – July 07

We are staying in a small village called Talloires right by Lake Annecy. The weather has been changable and we had a lot of rain at first but then the sun arrived and the flying became good. Have a look at some of the photos I took today on my way up to base above the ‘Dents de Lanfon’. A fantastic day of superb flying and views…

Di drove me up to the take off at Plan Fait (next to the Foret de l’Aventure) and it was 3pm by the time I had done my checks and taken off into the bouyant air. Most of the gliders were slope soaring infront of take-off but I decided to go in search of thermals around the back. I followed another Gradient glider and was losing height above the trees flying towards Les Dents de Lanfon. Suddenly my vario started to scream at me and soon I was flying with the big boys up at cloud base – I was nervous to fly into the cloud as the suck underneath it was quite powerful! I had a couple of large collapses but they popped out as soon as I heard the rustle! It was lovely flying and the air was cool at altitude with lovely views of the lake.
(The first time I took off here, I was with Sam and Dave. Sam did a perfect forward launch take off first when there was nil wind. I then took off but sat back in my harness too early and the glider lost flying speed and I dropped out of the sky and landed in the top of a tree just before the cliff edge. My canopy over took me and I spent the next 2 hours untangling it from the trees with Dave. Thanks Dave! I won’t do that again! I was lucky and learnt an important lesson)


I landed a couple of hours later. The wind had picked up on the landing site. As I still had quite a bit of height I flew over the lake and back towards the hotel so I could get an aerial photo of Le Cottage – where we were staying. Our hotel is the one with the pool shown below…

A couple of days before we took off at the Col de la Forclaz which was exciting. It was a busy take off and the thing to do was prepare your glider to the side, bundle it up and wait for your turn. When I first came to Annecy nearly nine years ago I was too frightened to take off here as I had only just qualified. I felt much more confident this time. I thermalled up above the trees to the right hand side of take off and flew along the length of the ridge for 3 hours. I landed down by the landing field below Plan Fait near to the paragliding shop. Another wonderful day of flying. I LOVE this sport…
Dave and his son Sam were in Chamonix flying at Plaine Joux for the first 3 days. We went over to join them on the second day and had a lovely flight infront of Mont Blanc. It became very windy in the afternoon so we watched the competition pilots flying at the festival of flight which was inspiring. Their gliders fly so much faster.

Evenings were beautiful as the sun went down – gliders could still be seen in the air thermalling at 7.30pm! Talloires is a peaceful place and we shall definately be coming here again.

We ended the day with a swim in the lake and then we had supper at the hotel as the sun went down. The end to a perfect day!

Di loved the swimming and said that swimming in the Lake was like swimming in Evian! Her ‘bump’ seemed to grow in the cool waters!