Belgian Ardenne Paragliding Open 2011: Task 3

Today, I had to choose between running (Warandeloop) or flying (BAPO).  Because the weather was announced good, I decided to go flying and skip the running.  It turned out to be a good choice.  Let me explain why...

I started the day with getting up at 6h45 and taking my train at 7h40 from Kortrijk to Godinne.  Arriving at Godinne, my first mission was to walk to take-off along a rather unknown trail:

For those of you who don't know it, here's the tracklog of this walk.  This trail is less convenient than the one where you go left at the roundabout because it is steeper and there is more annoying vegetation:

In my opinion, you don't gain that much time in taking this path...

My first flight wasn't much of a big thing.  I landed after 42 minutes without making any distance.  Plenty of time for taking some pictures of the other pilots still battling their way up

I hiked back up along the easy trail, and quietly prepared for my second and probably also last flight of the day.  My expectations weren't that high... my mind was set to a bomb-out flight and I was already thinking of at what time I would be able to take the train back home after my landing.  It turned out completely different!  After some ridge-soaring action, i found a thermal that brought me to 1491m and there I decided to head for the first waypoint.  Once there, I was already quite a bit lower, but I simply enjoyed the flight and the nice view on the city of Namur.  I found two other smaller thermals somewhere east of Namur, and headed for the next turnpoint... which i didn't make.  I had to land after 19.8 km open distance, which is my personal best in Belgium!  My previous best was 18.3 km from Coo :-)  No need to say I was a happy man!  The tracklog of my flight is here.

After having packed my glider, I arranged with the organizers that I would send them my tracklog file afterwards, because I wanted to catch my train in Namur, which was about 8 km away from my landing spot.  After an 8 km hike through several small towns...

... I finally made it to Namur's trainstation, right on time for the 19h21 train to Brussels-South!

As Murphy always strikes when you don't need him, my train in Brussels-South had a delay of 32 minutes... so I arrived in Kortrijk around 22h15 instead of 21h45 as I had planned... I jumped on my bike and was finally home at 22h30... tired, but satisfied!

More pictures of today can be found in my Google+ album.  Feel free to comment!