Our home for the next two weeks is Algodonales where we will learn to paraglide under the expert tutelage of Zero Gravity. We arrive at the allotted casa rural, our lodgings, but can’t get the key to open the door. Not a good start. We wander round and realise there is another door around the corner. This is our entrance although there is nothing to tell us this! Inside is freezing cold, however, the next day we come to appreciate the cool after a few hours on the hill in the blazing sunshine. We grab a siesta and some supplies before meeting up at the paragliding shop for dinner.
For our first day we have a couple of hours of theory before heading out to a site to practice ground handling (basically getting the wing up and controlling it once it’s in the air, but not physically leaving the ground yourself). It’s hot, sweaty work but lots of fun. We have a long lunch break to avoid the fiercest heat of the day and then it’s more ground handling in the afternoon on a rough, just ploughed field. By the end we are bruised and battered and very ready for home. Can our bodies cope with another 13 days of this?!?
Monday morning sees us travel to the launch site for Algodonales Levante (we were ground handling in the landing field for this site on yesterday afternoon). It’s windy and there is some debate about whether we should be going out on tandem flights, as it might be off-putting for us to fly for the first time in these conditions. How little they know us yet! As the week progresses we realise it’s the bumps, surges and pitches that are fun! We are told to run even once in the air as the tandem may touch down briefly after take-off and Beck follows this instruction to the letter, legs still pedalling well into the air – it’s a comical sight.
In the afternoon we visit Ronda La Vieja where Beck is first up in the tandem with lead instructor, José. They pretty much plummet like stones, landing in a wheat field with a long walk out. She does get to ‘flare’, basically braking for a nice soft landing, but otherwise doesn’t have time to take the controls. The others, having waited a little longer for conditions to change, get much longer flights where they take the controls for a long time, landing back at the launch site rather than in the field below so that shuttling backwards and forwards is not required (this was also the plan for Beck’s flight but the conditions decided otherwise!) So when all the others have flown, Beck is offered another go, and surprises herself at how much she wants to do it. This time it’s a perfect, long flight, with plenty of time to take the controls and get a feel for the different manoeuvres. They land next to a road to avoid the hike out of last time and instructor Luisma with CP trainee Vincent land shortly after, right on the road, looking super cool! The sun is setting, the sky is blue, the scenery is beautiful (there are so many wild flowers out at this time of year) – it’s all that we hoped for from paragliding.
After the euphoria of Monday’s tandem flights, we are back to ground handling on Tuesday, this time with full sized wings. We attempt reverse take-off manoeuvres. They are so difficult and it feels demotivating after yesterday’s brilliant experiences, but we keep reminding ourselves that it is only day three! We are at the El Bosque landing site and conditions are gusty, with changeable wind directions. We watch Vince land his wing in a hedge and Ollie, the other CP trainee, land his much further away than expected. Even Joonas, a pilot with four years’ experience, flares too early and seems to drop out the sky from a height. Although it’s all good experience for us to watch these errors (in order to avoid them) it also brings home how much the conditions affect the flight and we feel a bit better about our seeming lack of progress with ground handling. El Bosque town is bright and clean and turns out to be a nice place to spend a few hours – it’s somewhere I could see us basing ourselves if we were to return to fly in this area.
Wednesday sees us heading for the beach. The night before at dinner we have both said we will swim in the sea but this commitment quickly changes when we arrive. It’s grey, windy and cold! We seem to have arrived in Skegness! We do a couple of tandem flights, the second of which we practice dealing with pitching and surging, where the wing pendulums back and forth. It’s an important skill to master, but also so much fun that it doesn’t feel like learning, more like being on the biggest, most exhilarating swing! We spend a good long time ridge soaring back and forth in really calm, laminal wind, building confidence at the controls. Over lunch we discuss whether we would accept the challenge of a first solo flight if we were to be offered. We are half expecting this to be the day as Vince and Ollie have told us it was this time last week that they did theirs. Yet it still seems incredible that we might be able to go solo. But as predicted, after lunch we are offered just this. Clive is totally up for it and makes the point that it is what we have come here for and that the team wouldn’t let us do it if they didn’t think we could, so we harness up and, one by one, set off on a short top to bottom hop onto the beach. It’s totally brilliant and feels unreal to have done this in such a short space of time. After the difficulties of ground handling yesterday, we are on a high again. Learning to paraglide is a rollercoaster experience to be sure, but more so emotionally than physically!
We spend Thursday morning going through more theory but after lunch we get out again to Ronda for more solo flights. This time, Beck is in pole position, having landed in the fields at Ronda two days before in the tandem. It’s an unexpected confidence boost and she is happy to step up to go first. Whoopee! It’s just brilliant. We manage to squeeze in two top to bottom flights, returning to Algo late in the evening for a late dinner and bed. It’s worth saying that there are tons of restaurant options in the town and all are cheap – a good meal and drinks is never more than €10 per person and you could definitely eat more cheaply. We will certainly have a shock when we move on to Seville!
Friday morning sees us heading up to Algo Levante, where we began all those days ago … at the beginning of the week. Again, we marvel at how far we have progressed in such a short space of time. The take-off site is much higher than Ronda so this will be the most challenging flight so far. Not only that, but we have a road to fly over, power lines to one side and a tree and house on the boundary of the landing site, all to avoid. No pressure then. And yet again, we do it, following the radio directions given by José at take-off and Pablo on landing, we are in good hands and growing in confidence all the time.
The afternoon sees us back at Ronda la Vieja, first for a quick top to bottom flight and then for a longer flight with some ridge soaring. This is beyond the course but the conditions are good so we go for it. We are already starting the Club Pilot syllabus a day early! In between flights Beck’s lines have become horribly tangled probably due to the wing landing over her head on the first landing. It seems to take ages to sort out at the top and is a good incentive to land perfectly (easier said than done!) The longer, ridge soaring flight is therefore a great reward for the effort put into setting up. But it’s worth pointing out that thorough preparation is absolutely essential as you are putting your life in the kit.
We return to Algo at 9.30pm and reconvene for paella at 10.15pm. We would never eat this late at home, but it just seems right here. It’s delicious and goes perfectly with huge celebratory G&T’s. Then it’s on to Pepe’s bar for more G&T’s, darts(!) and table football to generally celebrate a fantastic week. We collapse into bed after 2am, looking forward to a day of rest!