As June rolled around it meant it was time for our annual pilgrimage down to the Spanish side of the Pyrenees to begin our XC progression courses. Ager is the perfect location for learning the black art of XC flying and it has become a regular part of our European program. For the first time Akis and Fiona where at the helm for the first three courses. It was a new experience for them, but they rose to the challenge and proved what a fantastic team we have.
During this years four weeks of courses we had a fantastic mix of regular faces and new faces joining us for the first time. Each one of our four weeks produced personal bests for many of our pilots with many pilots getting to cloud base for the first time. Congratulations particularly to John on his first paragliding flight at the magnificent age of 87, who flew on the tandem with his son Graham as pilot ( a little side project we’d been hoping to achieve for some time), Patrick for hitting 8,600ft and getting 10+ hours flying in one week, Jon for his first 30km, Maureen and Nigel for completing their first XC tasks, Alan for hitting 7,200ft & Cloud base for the first time, Glenn for nailing Thermalling and Ian for breaking in his new Rush 4 with ease. Extra congratulations also for Paul for sticking with Lee and Akis and managing to achieve the ultimate XC goal of Tremp on the very last day of the last course.
With conditions ranging from chilly post cold frontal cloud bases of up to 9000ft to 34 degrees at the landing field and an inversion thick enough to walk on we had it all. Each week was good but the last week gave us 6 out of 6 flying days with lots of thermalling and some good XC triangle tasks achieved. With only 4 days lost out of the whole month Ager proved once again it is a great place to increase a pilots XC ability. We are there again in 2016 so take a look at the trip page for more details.