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Published: July 19th 2017
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No TMB talk. No quiz. No musings.
Just plain fun and one great buzz. Up the cable car to Plan Praz again accompanied by our pilots and a couple of super sized packs. Sure a few Euros lighter but keen and enthusiastic to join those we have seen soaring in the skies. Very little routine to follow, the pilots roll out the gliders, harness us and themselves in and tell us to run off the side of the mountain. That's it, just run and keep running. Strange but that's what I did. I didn't regard the scenario as dangerous and within a minute we were gliding and soaring and turning with the currents and it was FANTASTIC. From take off we gain almost 500 m to the height of The Brevent (sorry TMB talk) soar over the Refuge Bellachat (oops more TMB talk) and view the track we had walked just a couple of days ago (oops, oops, but I have some good shots of the track. I'll put them in. Then it's glide, twist, turn, soar, hover and just enjoy. I loved it.
Heaps of people paraglide here in Chamonix. We estimated about a dozen per hour for
about 5 hours per day as a minimum so it's quite the thing. It's common to see a dozen or so in the skies at any given time, particularly early in the day before the thermals cut in and become a little less predictable. Calmer shorter flights commence from about 8:00 in the morning and last flights are usually about 2:00. Cloud cover was expected today in the late afternoon so our time of midday worked really well. We have seen rain once in our 2 weeks. It rained heavily when we had a rest day in Courmayeur so,we stayed dry and comfortable and have never needed our coats for protection from precipitation, we have needed them for wind protection though and again today during our glide.
Well all good from Chamonix Mt Blanc. Tomorrow we go back to Geneva Airport and take a little train (everything is little in Switzerland except the mountains!)mot the station and then a bus to Munich. The bus is cheap and long (well normal,bus size but it takes a while to get to Munich) but it should do the trick. As such the next entry should be posted from or to Munich.
Ciao for now.
Back again. It's picnic at the pub time. It's where we are staying and they don't have evening meals so they we fine with the picnic. Roast chicken and salad rolls, English custard flan, lemon tart and beer. I know we forgot the chocolate but we will go for gelati and Julie is pretty religious about selecting at least one chocolate variety.
We have just watched 5 or 6 helicopter runs at a small fire under the cable car we used today. They water bombed quite effectively and although it was pretty spectacular it was all gone in 20 minutes or so. There are always helicopters in the skies here, often the rescue copter but also flights and ferry services.
This time bye.
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Sandy Smyth
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TMB
Thank you Rob and congratulations . I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog and following your journey. Definitely qualifies as a trip of a lifetime. On with the next one. Best wishes. ?