Ed Ewing

Coupe Icare 2011: Blogging

2012-01-17T19:55:00.001Z

September 2011Blogging for the four days of the Coupe Icare festival in France in September 2011. Words, photos and video are all here.

Classic Routes: Book

2012-01-17T19:41:00.001Z

Classic Routes was published at the end of 2011. It's a 200 page coffee table book all about flying and is beautiful – a really stunningly produced marvel. My colleague Bob Drury edited it - it's his baby and has been in his head for a decade and in production over a year - while I helped subedit and generally make helpful comments as and when needed.All the news about it is here.

The Guardian: Bylines

2012-01-17T19:29:00.001Z

I regularly worked freelance for the Guardian from 2005 to 2009, often on the Money, Environment, Media or Travel desks. My first shift was on the website for the Money desk, when it was a couple of a computers in the basement of a building in Farringdon. My last shift in 2009 was just after they moved to swish new multi-million pound open-plan offices in Kings Cross.In that time the website grew from a basement operation to leading the business. 'Web first' became the mantra for stories, and print journalists, used to one deadline a day, were shaken awake with rolling news and multiple story demands throughout the day. It really was - still is - a revolutionary time.As a web editor on the site it was clear early on that the growth of the web was THE story in the industry. Looking back, even from a distance as short as a couple of years, it was clearly a historic shift – a moment when the page was turning on print in favour of the digital word.All past, present and future Guardian bylined work is here.

Paramotor Magazine: Issue 27

2011-11-21T18:14:00.001Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 27, October / November 2011

A brilliant issue of Paramotor Magazine, with superb photography throughout. We went big on the Coupe Icare - the world's biggest fun flying festival - and I wrote up a good piece about searching for missing people by paramotor.Read more about what's in Paramotor issue 27 here.

Kendal Mountain Festival 2011

2011-11-16T16:24:00.001Z

I'll be presenting at the Free Flight Night at Kendal Mountain Festival - the world's biggest mountain festival - on Thursday 17 November from 7.30pm. Come and join us: John Chambers is the main draw, talking about his Red Bull X-Alps experiences, along with Jocky Sanderson. It starts at 7.30pm, at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal, the Lake Distict, England.

Cross Country 137: The sharp end

2011-09-13T15:12:00.000Z

Somewhere in July it all went a bit wrong.

First, Xavier Murillo went missing in Peru. When someone goes missing in the mountains you think two things: they're gone; but maybe there's some hope.

It then becomes important – increasingly important – not to give up hope as the days stretch on.

The Xavier is Missing story was well covered on XCmag.com and elsewhere. It became the biggest search and locate mission for a paraglider pilot ever, I think. It harnessed the power of the web and social media to raise thousands to keep the plane flying and keep the search going.

Sitting at a keyboard we became a sort of hub. By chance we had a writer there - Kiwi Johnston. He did a brilliant job. It wasn't really until about Day 3 that Bob – my colleague on XCmag – told me he was out there. We grabbed him and asked him to write what he was seeing.

Later that same week I was working on something for the website when an email pinged in from Louise Joselyn at CIVL. She was asking us not to publish anything online as there was a 'situation'. Posters on PGforum and elsewhere had started speculating that some pilots at the Paragliding World Championships had had accidents.

The live tracking that pilots fly with nowadays allows you to see everything near enough in real time. Thus you get to watch as pilots descend under their reserve, albeit you only see a little track against a Google Earth background.

It turned out two people had died in separate accidents, and five others threw their reserves.

This was the worst possible outcome. Traffic online on xcmag.com went off the chart, and as the story unfolded we tried sensitively to pose some legitimate questions to the organisers in Piedrahita.

The thing about these situations is you more or less know everybody involved. Or rather, you know some people and the rest are 'family'. We all do the same thing, like the same aspects of the sport – freedom, adventure, passion etc – and have similar experiences. When we read about someone spiralling to the ground struggling to free their hands from twisted risers unable to reach the handle of their emergency parachute, then it is truly gut-wrenching. We feel it, because we've been there, or similar places, and we can clearly imagine it.

What was particularly galling about the World Championships this year, and this is my personal opinion, is that it was like a tea-party laid out with poisoned tea-cups. It looked fantastic - it should have been fantastic - and yet people fell out of the sky.

The gliders offer the best performance they ever have, and yet they bite twice as hard. Many pilots didn't have a proper chance to get to know their new gliders, 'forced' on them by new rules; and many pilots, it seems, didn't understand how to fly them properly. Throw in a heap of pressure, a lot of excitement, a lot of rule-making, and wide-eyed talk about 'safety' and it was a heady mix.

What's amazing is that this story doesn't go beyond the small world of free flight. Two people die in a cycling race and it would at least make the news. A canoe tragedy ditto. Climbers falling off Mont Blanc at least get a paragraph. Do that in the Himalaya and you might get a film out of it. And yet it barely got beyond the local newspapers in Spain, Argentina and Chile (home of the deceased pilots).

You often see in this sport a plea for wider recognition. A sort of, 'Don't they understand what a wonderful thing it is that we are doing?' I have always argued that paragliding couldn't handle the rigorous attention that mainstream media attention would bring. The only thing the MMS would be interested in are the reserve throws and the near misses. Serious accidents would be front page news, and deaths a cause for resignations, top-to-bottom political reorganisation and serious analysis.

As it is, we don't have rigorous press interest, so not a huge amount of accountability, and so things drag along. Change comes from within, slowly, and outside influence is minimal.

End of the Line, Cross Country, issue 137

I was sad to be a pilot this summer, and I was sad to be part of the World Championships and the gloss that surrounded it. We thought a lot about how to approach it in issue 137, and in the end we just took a long look at how we got here. I think it is the longest article we've ever published in Cross Country magazine.

It doesn't provide any answers, but in a sport where even the keenest pilots often don't know who CIVL is or what the FAI is or how competitions are run, it was, I think, a decent contribution.

There's a danger in sport of being overtaken by ambition, of passion turning into obsession. I think that happens in paragliding quite a lot. Pilots who start out with a love for what they do and what the sport brings them tread a line of obsessiveness, where it's 'all or nothing' and do-or-die. I've never believed it should be like that – the price isn't worth paying.

Read issue 137 online

See what's in Cross Country 137

Paramotor Magazine: Issue 26

2011-09-13T14:34:00.001Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 26, August/September 2011

Paramotor mag goes Stateside, with road trips through the air and spectacular images going loco on the way to Acapulco. I wrote a feature on flying vol bivouac with your powered paraglider, and the whole magazine just fell into place. It's easy when the photos are this good.

Read the magazine online here

See what's in the issue here

Cross Country: Issue 136

2011-09-13T14:26:00.002Z

Cross Country magazine, issue 136, July/August 2011

A big issue, with lots on the forthcoming Paragliding World Championships, including a Piedrahita site guide by Steve Ham and a profile with R11 designer Luc Armant. Story of the issue though has to be the amazing Everest flight by Babu Sunuwar. He climbed to the summit, flew from the top and landed 30km away. Go Babu!

Read Cross Country issue 136 here

See what's in the issue

And read my online report of Babu Sunuwar's historic feat here. This was a great buzz to work on. He actually climbed without a permit and did the whole trip under the radar. The result was when I got to speak to him by phone in Namche Bazar in Nepal he was in hiding. Drunk on chang, but in hiding! This was also XCmag.com's biggest story ever, attracting traffic from around the world.

Babu Sunuwar on the top of the world

Paramotor Magazine: Avoiding Airspace

2011-09-13T14:13:00.001Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 25, June/July 2011Even if you don’t normally fly near airspace it’s important to know the rules of your country. That way when you move sites or fly XC you won’t be taken by surprise. With a plethora of technological marvels on the market, we find out how some top pilots deal with airspace.

THE WORLD CHAMPION: MEMORY MAP“I usually print my own air maps from Memory Map,” says Michel Carnet, current World Champion. “Or the same air maps used on my iPhone with the Memory Map app.”

Memory Map digital charts cover the US, UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand and can be downloaded to your laptop, iPad and iPhone, bought on CD or used on Memory Map’s Adventurer series of GPS devices.

Users can customise maps on screen and also print them out. “I only use the iPhone in flight when I know I am flying very close to airspace,” says Michel, “otherwise I use the printed map.”www.memory-map.co.uk or through the iPhone App Store

Read more at Paramotormag.com

London riots: Lewisham damage

2011-08-09T10:44:00.075Z

Update: Wednesday 10 August, 9.45am

Lewisham is back to its old self after a quiet night. Nothing happened, despite rumours of race riots and marching bands of National Front / English Defence League, of which a little bit more in a bit. But first, the market is open and all is normal. Two photos from this morning:

Lewisham market is back in full swing...

...although TK Max is late to the party – the boards are new this morning. All photos: Ed Ewing

Last night was again spent watching the looting spread across the country, while grazing Twitter and online for news about what was going on locally. According to Twitter a gang of up to 2,000 men from the NF / EDL were in Eltham and about to march on Lewisham in an attempt to spark a race riot. (About 3.5 miles - 1hr 10mins according to Google Maps.)

There were pleas - hundreds - aimed at the BBC to stop showing what was going on in Birmingham and to focus on the disaster about to happen in south east London. 'Eltham' was trending on Twitter. Eltham of course is known for the murder of Steven Lawrence and the only time it makes the news is when race is on the agenda.

The teenager who was with Steven when he died was Duwayne Brooks. Duwayne is now a local councillor, tried to run for London mayor last year, and has been Tweeting all week for calm (as well as tweeting through last night's Newsnight and laughing at the classic spat between Harriet Harman and Michael Gove).

So it's all very relevant, still current and now. But it was almost impossible to make out what was going on - to separate the fact from fiction. The best clue was, as the tweets about an imminent race riot reached peak, a helicopter - presumable police - flew over, checked out Lewisham and Eltham for a few minutes around 9.30pm, and headed off.

We had to weed out the voices of reason from a huge amount of nonsense - the BBC and the Guardian sent reporters down to Eltham, and both reported 'Nothing to see here'. There did indeed seem to have been some sort of tribal gathering – but it was guys getting together to defend their community. Loud and raucous and intimidating but nothing the police on the ground couldn't handle, unlike the past three nights across London.

This led to the amazing/baffling/alarming/take-your-pick sight of people like Boy George (an Eltham boy - yes, amazing isn't it) who was bigging-up the Eltham defence posse/Millwall fans on Twitter appearing to stand alongside Nick Griffin from the BNP.

Boy George fans the Facebook page...

... and Nick Griffin gives them the thumbs-up... but can you hear the dog-whistle?

All quite bizarre. Anyway, Twitter's very double-edged when it comes to these sorts of things – you have to find your Tweeter and stick with them, otherwise, like last night, you just get lost in waves of rumour and speculation. Local councillors like Mike Harris (although where is Steve Bullock in all this? Oh, he's been on holiday...) and mainstream media seem to be the best. Even Brockley Central got carried away in the moment (although it's understandable - everyone does it and it's the nature of the beast).

Brockley Central posts a correction

The lesson is, if you don't know, don't speculate: it's why we all shout at the BBC News these days – too much shoddy speculation (I am in my 30s and read the Guardian btw, not 80s and the DT).

Anyway, it's all back to normal for now in Lewisham. It's safe to head back down to get almost-over veggies and fruit, a massive bowl of bananas for a pound, or perhaps even a criminally expensive loan – surely this type of legal looting, charging 500%+APR for a short-term loan, should be brought under control. Oops... can of worms!

Short term loans aimed at the credit un-worthy are pitched to shoppers on Lewisham High Street

Update: Tuesday 9 August, 3.45pm

Lewisham town centre at 3pm, with no market and a mild police presence. All photos: Ed Ewing, taken 9 August 2011

Having had one eye on Twitter for the day, I had read variously that Lewisham was either now rioting, about to riot, fully closed, closed to traffic, being guarded by the Welsh police, locked-down or shutting up shop.

All the main stores, including banks and the shopping centre, are closed. Some of the independent retailers remained open this afternoon

I went for a look at the town centre at 3-3.30pm. Usually the market is in full swing, with the bargains just about to kick in at this time. But instead many – most – of the shops were indeed closed, but there was no riot/smoke/groups of looters. The market was not there.

The bellweather of the day, Gennaro's deli, was half-closed – two shutters down, tables inside, but still serving. That sort of reflected the feeling of the place: half closed.

Gennaro's deli in Lewisham town centre. If he's shut, you know there's trouble (or it's night time)

I saw seven police on the beat, and two (maybe three) police cars. There was no 'nervousness' or 'tension'. It was more watchful. In saying that would I head down there this evening, with all the rumours flying and the afternoon turning out to be warm and sunny? Probably not.

PS: Thanks for the nice/thoughtful comments to my earlier post today. :)

10.30am: Overnight damage

London riots in Lewisham: Police and rioters on Albion Way on Monday 8 August. Video: Fragshield

Burnt out car in Albion Way, Lewisham, London. All photos: Ed Ewing, taken 9 August 2011. Click on them to see them bigger

I was coming back to London from Edinburgh yesterday when at 6pm I got a text. “Lewisham now, check Twitter.” For the next hour and a half as we headed for Kings Cross I was on my laptop, trying to follow what was going on.

Arriving in London it was very quiet. Not many people on the trains and Tubes coming through town at 8pm, and the atmosphere was a little bit jumpy. Literally in one case as I bumped into a girl getting off the Tube and we both jumped. “Sorry!”

The best joke on Twitter last night – and there were lots – was along the lines of, “They’ve raided Primark in Lewisham and have made away with £42.50 worth of goods.”

The other remark people kept making was, “Lewisham? That’s where Europe’s biggest police station is…”

Europe's biggest police station, in Lewisham. Also famous as the place Andy Coulson had to hand himself into

And yes it it. Lewisham actually has a pretty daggy town centre at the best of times. The shopping centre is brutal, in both senses of the word, although the daily fruit and veg market outside keeps it human. Elsewhere, there are neat little gems – a deli, things like that.

Coming into Lewisham at 8.30pm it was clear most of the riot was over. There were no cabs at the station, the shops and petrol station nearby were all shuttered, there were no helicopters overhead and the sirens weren’t abnormal.

Turning on the TV it seemed everyone had moved onto Croydon, where they’d set the world alight by burning down a furniture store.

View The Lewisham Riot: key locations, with photos in a larger map

This morning I went out to look at the damage from the Lewisham Riot of summer 2011. I took a tour through the town centre first. There is actually very little visible damage in the centre itself. McDonald’s was smashed up, Thinesh Jewellers had its shutters buckled – I don’t know if it was looted or not – and Superdrug had a window smashed.

McDonald's in Lewisham town centre

Thinesh Jewellers in Lewisham High Street – forced shutters

Smashed window in Superdrug

Much more damage was done on Lee High Road, centred round the Dirty South pub. This pub has form for me – when I moved to London I spent longer than I wanted to living above it for a few weeks in tidy but overcrowded dorm rooms (a dodgy/illegal 'hostel') sharing with Aussies, Eastern Europeans, a few Africans and some Russians. When one of the guys got meningitis and nearly died, the pub (then known as the Hobgoblin, I think) was quarantined by the health squad – after that, as soon as I could I moved out.

The Dirty South pub in Lee High Road. Rioters tried to burn it down

Boarded up windows of the Dirty South on Lee High Road, Lewisham

“They tried to burn the Dirty South down,” said a guy sitting literally in the window of his barber shop opposite. He was originally from somewhere in Eastern Europe, by his accent.

“Do you not have shutters?” I asked.

“For a barbers?” he said.

No shutters, no window at Mino Hair on Lee High Road

The window had been completely taken out and he was now just sitting in it, taking the sun and guarding the shop. He said he’d watched the riot for two hours from his upstairs flat. “They were just kids,” he said.

Despite this little parade of shops being minutes from Europe’s biggest police station, the police didn’t arrive for two hours, he said. And when they did there were only six of them in a van. “They came, they got out of their van, they looked, and then they went away again,” is what he said.

“What are they going to do at the Olympics?” he asked. “It will just take a spark.” The off licence next door with its shutters now firmly down had been looted thoroughly, he said.

He declined to have his photo taken with his window or shop.

Almost next door is Heidi Alexander MP’s constituency office. This had its windows and door smashed in and a laptop stolen. She was on BBC News 24 last night talking about it.

Heidi Alexander's office on the corner – windows and door smashed in, laptop nicked

No flies on these boys ... the glaziers got round early to promote themselves on Heidi Alexander's smashed-up office

One of Heidi’s team who lives nearby was inside tidying up. “They didn’t take the desktop PCs” he said, “and the laptop is encrypted so that will be useless.”

There are no shutters on Heidi’s office. A token of respect and openness for the community she represents. Sadly, that didn’t pay off last night.

He pointed me up towards the BP garage, which had also been attacked. ‘Closed’ said the sign. The windows were smashed, the bins upended, glass on the floor. It was pretty much beaten up.

BP took a beating in Lewisham last night

Heading back down towards the town centre, I noted that Nando’s had survived – this was another key Twitter comment last night, along the lines of ‘Nandooooo’s Noooooo!’. Obviously people love this place. Next door, the temple was in good shape too.

Nandos is OK everyone, breathe easy

London Sivan Kovil temple

In Albion Way though there were two cars burnt out (see the BBC footage). A group of early birds were standing around discussing them. Among them a man who “came to this country 35 years ago,” from, I presumed but didn’t ask, Jamaica or the West Indies. “I came into town yesterday but it was full of smoke. I thought the car park was on fire. So I turned and went home.”

Car number 1 in Albion Way SE13

He was back, taking a look at the damage. “When they are caught they will get a criminal record,” he said, displaying a certain faith in the system.

One guy, also on his bike, said he’d rung the police the night before when a woman had been hurt outside his home. They’d said, I paraphrase, “Don’t worry, this is Europe’s biggest police station, it’ll be over in 20 minutes.”

He continued: “And it was. The police cordoned off the town centre, put a line across it and they all got in their cars and went.”

Car number 2 in Albion Way, Lewisham

The ‘They’ were the rioters, who he said he’d seen arriving in cars (“all smart cars, not older than two or three years old”), park up, move into the town centre and then leave when the rioting failed to take light.

“The damage you see down in Catford is as they fanned out towards Croydon,” was his take.

As we stood there watching, a respectable-looking white man on his bike rode past, looked at the cars and said, “Fucking n******.”

"Fucking idiot," someone said after him.

“My fear is if this happens again tonight some shopkeeper will shoot someone,” said the other man on the bike. Another guy, who by the look of him and his cameras was a freelance photographer, agreed. He said he’d seen shopkeepers organising and defending their shops last night in Hackney. He’d also had two cameras stolen from him in Tottenham the night before.

Apart from the tidying up then, Lewisham appears to have got off lightly, certainly compared to other parts of the city. Two burnt out cars, the local MP's office, the garage and various shops.

On the way home I stopped at Genarro’s deli to see if he and his staff were ok. His assistant was putting out two tables and the Italian flag was flying as normal. “Yes, yes,” he said, “Everything was ok.”

Who's for coffee? Gennaro's open for business

“Kids,” had told him that trouble was coming to Lewisham so he’d been forewarned. “Kids of customers, kids who come in, they use Facebook, Twitter…” he mimed the thumbs going. “I said, Lewisham? Nah! But at 5.30 we start to see people so we just closed the shop.”

That must have been about the same time that a friend was getting her nails done in a nail shop in Lewisham centre. She’d been scared witless because they’d looked up and seen hooded guys outside with bats/wood coming towards the shop.

Beauty shop on Lee High Road in Lewisham, smashed window

The owner locked everyone in until it was safe to come out.

She then walked home quickly “the back way,” which meant going up and over Blackheath. There she saw a group of guys preparing, wrapping scarves around faces and the like.

“I just held my head up and walked through,” she said, before, like a lot of us last night, getting home, closing the door and watching it all on the telly.

Some more photos from damage around Lewisham:

The bookies

The gold shop

The Chinese restaurant

The Indian take-away

PS: I've lived in Lewisham/Greenwich/Blackheath area on and off for about six or seven year. Before that I worked for three years as editor of one of the local magazines, The Guide - now owned by Archant. Sometimes I post reviews and the like on Greenwich.co.uk. I don't usually blog, I just file articles etc here, but when it's on your doorstep, well, you've got to.

Waiting to board: Interview with Cheapflights.com

2011-07-21T21:34:00.001Z

I was interviewed by Cheapflights.com months ago - way back in December 2010 I think. The interview has finally gone up. I'm famous!

Sample question:

CF: What is your travel pet peeve?

EW: Airports. From the lines at security to the constant harassment you get on some budget airlines to buy, buy, buy – cigarettes, perfume, lottery tickets, whatever. Geneva airport has the whole thing sussed – why can't they all be like that? If possible, I get the train now in Europe. Although it's usually more expensive, it's a million times nicer as a travel experience, you can take loads of luggage, it's relaxing, and it's more eco-friendly.

Read the whole interview here.

I also got a badge:

Cross Country: Rio de Janeiro

2011-06-28T19:07:00.001Z

Cross Country magazine, issue 135, May/June 2011

Sometimes this job takes you great places. I've been to Rio de Janeiro before but never flown it in such style as with Nader Couri, a hang glider pilot and grandfather of the whole hang gliding and paragliding scene out in Rio.

Driving up to launch in his sleek 4-x-4, with one of his three hang gliders strapped to the roof, no permit – "Just tell them you are with me" – and air conditioning to keep us cool was a joy. As was flying in the same air, from the same site as the man. A genuine gentleman, who offered us the best of his hospitality for a week while we were in Rio over Carnival. Thank you Nader.

Putting the magazine together while on the road is always fun. Accommodation gets chosen based on wi-fi strength, and the mornings start early as you log on to catch up with Europe. It was Rio one day, Santa Catarina the next - down south flying the fun Florianopolis. I've travelled a lot in Brazil – from top to bottom and a chunk of the interior. Sometimes it's nice just to stay put in one place. Thanks Rio, you're my favourite city for sure.

See the rest of Nader's photos here

Cross Country: The Red Bull X-Alps 2011: X-Alps Fever

2011-06-28T18:56:00.001Z

Cross Country issue 135, May/June 2011

It’s back. The 2011 Red Bull X-Alps promises to be better than ever as 32 international athletes line up to compete in the toughest flying race in the world

Does it need explaining? Is there a pilot on the planet who doesn’t know about the Red Bull X-Alps? That on 17 July – a day after the Paragliding World Championships finishes in Spain – 32 international athletes will line up in the centre of Salzburg, Austria ready to race 864km through the Alps to Monaco?

Carrying their wing with them they must be on foot or in the sky at all times. No other form of transport is allowed. The race will take just over a week if the weather is good, longer if bad.

As it develops some pilots will drop out through exhaustion, others will be cut from the back as they get left behind. Once the first person reaches Mont Gros in Monaco the clock starts ticking. Forty-eight hours later the races ends and athletes score to where they’re standing. It’s the ultimate race to goal.

This will be the fifth Red Bull X-Alps and it will be the fastest. The bar has been raised again after last year’s surprise winners Chrigel Maurer and Thomas Theurillat nailed it. On the first Red Bull X-Alps athletes turned up in hiking boots expecting to stroll through alpine meadows and fly until sunset. Supporters made the tea. Now, race teams prepare and train for months in advance. Manufacturers develop specialist wings and harnesses for ‘their’ pilots and supporters are sports psychologists, mountain guides and weather gurus rolled into one.

Over the next few pages we talk to Tomo Coconea, Chrigel Maurer and Alex Hofer and meet this year’s crop of athletes, some racing for the first time, some old hands. Every one of them has a story, every one of them is an inspiration. You won’t find better athletes than these in any sport in the world. Prepare to be amazed…

An interview with Chrigel Maurer...

...Alex Hofer and Tomo Coconea...

...and odds on all the rest.

Read the whole thing in Cross Country magazine, issue 135

Paramotor Mag: Racing the Tide

2011-06-28T18:31:00.002Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 24, April/May 2011

Paul Kilburn helped save seven people’s lives last summer with skilful and brave piloting. He didn’t want anyone to know, but we found out and think his story should be told. By Ed Ewing

The place where this story takes place is in England’s north west, near a stretch of coastline called Fleetwood Beach. When the tide goes out here miles of sand are exposed, attracting dog walkers, kite flyers and families hunting for shells or just splashing from puddle to puddle. But when the tide comes in, it races back in – “incredibly quickly” says the local Coastguard.

It was near here in 2004, on flats like these that a group of 23 commercial cockle pickers tragically drowned when the sea galloped back in. Abandoned by their boss they made desperate phone calls to family as they stood, chin deep in water on dissolving sandbanks. The event shocked Britain, resulted in several jailings and forced changes in the law.

Last summer a similar tragedy was narrowly averted by the bravery of a British paramotor pilot called Paul Kilburn. With low fuel, flying low over the sea a kilometre offshore and at some risk to himself, Paul shepherded two adults and five children from sandbar to sandbar after they had been caught out by rapidly rising tides. He then stayed with them, flying circles above them to show the Coastguard where they were. Duty done, he headed back to land where his tank literally ran dry before landing.

The incident happened last year, but Paul asked friends to keep it quiet. However, rumours of his flight slowly leaked out and we tracked him down and asked him to tell us his story.

Speaking to us by phone from his home in Manchester, England, and at times clearly re-living the emotion, he explained to us what happened on that day, 15 August 2010…

Read the full interview in Paramotor Magazine issue 24

Paramotor Mag: Edina Koleszar

2011-06-28T18:24:00.003Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 24, April/May 2011

She got married in a bi-plane, holds four PPG world records and is an aerial star in her native Hungary. Ed Ewing dropped Edina Koleszar a line

EDINA Koleszar holds four world records, co-runs a school near Budapest and was voted national Ultralight Sportsperson of the Year back in 2009. Before paramotoring she flew paragliders and before that it was skydiving. Currently at home on maternity leave, we took the opportunity to fire some questions at her.

Edina, you have four world records and have held a fifth. You set them all in 2009. What happened that year?
At the FAI-CIMA Commission Meeting in 2008 it was decided that from 2009 there would be a female category added to the existing categories in paraglider control, foot-launched, thermal engine class. After studying the FAI Sporting Code I figured it would be fun to have a go.

So, tell us about the world records you hold.
The first record I did was an economy triangle. The goal was to surpass the existing male record, which I did, flying 120km. However, there are no ‘overall’ categories in Section 10, just male and female so it was ratified in the distance over a closed circuit, female category.

It was the same story with the 205km economy distance to a declared goal: there was no record in this category, so mine was the first in the record book. Carole Gobbe soon surpassed it and now it stands at 441km, flown by Karen Skinner.

I did well in the speed over a closed circuit category too. At 54.4km/h it stood as an unofficial record in the male category for almost a year too. Then Tony Gibson (SA) came along with an unbelievably fast 77km/h performance, and the order of the world was restored.

These world records were recognised as national records as well. In 2009 I was honoured with the ‘Ultralight Sportsperson of the Year’ title in Hungary.

There must have been a lot of planning involved…
Read more of the 2,000 word interview with Edina in Paramotor Magazine issue 24

Cross Country: The Adventure Issue

2011-05-02T17:25:00.001Z

CROSS COUNTRY 134 was another big issue. It turned into 'The Adventure Issue' by mistake – a story about flying the Bamiyan Buddhas arrived and that set off a spark. We ended up with a brilliant issue featuring vol-bivouac in Mongolia and John Silvester in the Himalaya, to name just two.

We topped it off with another free poster – the fourth in a series we started last year. A brilliant issue, though I say it myself!

See what else is in issue 134.

Cross Country: Squash Falconer

2011-05-02T17:19:00.000Z

Cross Country, issue 134, March/April 2011

Squash Falconer is going for the big one – heading to Everest to climb and fly the world’s highest mountain. By Ed Ewing

Talking to Squash I begin to feel that actually, maybe Everest wouldn’t be such a big deal after all. She has it all broken down into stages: “I’ll go to Kathmandu at the end of March. Then we fly to Lukla airport on the second of April, from there we trek to Base Camp at 5,600m – 1,000m higher than Mont Blanc.

“For acclimatisation you then go up to Camp One and back down again to rest a day or two. Then you go up to Camp One and maybe stay the night, come back down again, rest, and so on until you get to Camp Two or Camp Three.

“Then you come back down to Base Camp. And then you come back down even further and you rest there a good week or so.”

That brings you into the first week of May. “Then you start looking at going for the summit push. It’s a night at Camp One, a night at Camp Two, a night at Camp Three and then you get to Camp Four where you have a few hours and then you push through. It can be anything between four and seven days.”

Historically there is a seasonal sweet spot in the Everest climbing calendar around 20 May when the weather is warmer, the jet stream rises above the summit and the winds get lighter. Squash wants to be on the summit on such a day, because she wants to be the first...

Read the full article in Cross Country magazine issue 134

Paramotor Magazine: The Real Santa

2011-05-02T17:05:00.004Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 23, Feb/March 2011

Chris Santacroce is one of the good guys. A one-time hot shot, a founding member of the Red Bull Air Force, and a highly talented instructor his new passion is flying PPG and setting records. Ed Ewing listened in

“IT WAS LAST August and we did it in Texas,” says Chris Santacroce. “We didn’t get very good weather, but that wasn’t the point. We just wanted to get into the mode of doing records.”

Chris set a US open distance record for paramotoring last summer and it was ratified in December. It’s a long process, setting records, and this was no exception.

“A lot of times people do some pretty awesome flights and then the record is not ratified because they miss something. We just wanted to make a start,” he explains. “We fully expected to basically fail.”

With poor conditions – low cloudbase and no tail wind – they did a flight anyway. “And it turns out we got it.” There was no previous ‘limited fuel’ US record prior to it, so, “We set the bar, and we aim to go back and beat it.” It was 197 km over five hours 40 minutes, on just less than 10 litres of fuel.

Chris was flying with Othar Lawrence, a long time flying buddy and fellow Red Bull Air Force pilot. They get paid to do things like this. “It’s a fun thing for a handful of reasons,” Chris adds. “I don’t believe we’ll ever get the world record here in the United States because it’s not legal for us to fly with so much fuel, like Ramon [Morillas] does.

“But we’ll chase after this limited-fuel thing and then we’ll look for some other records.”

One of the records he has his eye on is the altitude gain: “We were talking about taking off in Death Valley, it’s below sea level, and with an epic cloudbase it’s possible.” Record-breaking where you can is almost a patriotic pilot’s duty, he laughs. “You know, we’re good American guys, we want to see some of these records held in the US. It’s fun stuff.”

Read the full 2,000 word article on subscription with Paramotor Magazine, issue 23

Cross Country magazine: Issue 133 + poster

2010-12-31T00:47:00.001Z

CROSS COUNTRY 133 was a bit of a monster. We did flatlands, and like the Mountain issue and the Acro issue tried to be definitive. That takes a lot of work and a lot of people. We got through 40,000 words I reckon, and squeezed it all into the magazine somehow, alongside some pretty exceptional photography as always.

For the past three issues we've given away a free poster. This issue it was a 'How to fly the Flatlands' poster, which I wrote. As always, a big rush at the end so the poster was done very quickly, but it seemed to work and actually probably benefited from the speed.

Cross Country is only available by mail order subscription, or as a download through Zinio.com, or on the iPad through the Zinio app.

Cross Country magazine: Flatland 200 km

2010-12-31T00:37:00.005Z

Cross Country, issue 133, Jan/Feb 2011

A Flatland special, with a six-page feature on places to fly over 200 km: Quixada, Piedrahita, Zapata, Manilla and De Aar. Kicking off with Zapata, Texas...

“IF YOU'RE INTERESTED in big cross country flights by far the finest place to find them is in Texas,” says Davis Straub, US hang glider pilot, world record holder and Zapata zealot.

“They say everything is bigger in Texas, and when it comes to cross country flights, they’re right. I consider Texas to be the best place in the world for cross country flying, whether by hang glider or paraglider.”

 The records make the case. Manfred Ruhmer flew 700.6 km here on 17 July 2001 to set the world record open distance for hang gliding. Officially it’s unbroken, unofficially, pilots have flown further here. Will Gadd flew from here both times when he set the world record open distance for paragliders, pushing it past 400 km to 423.4 km on 21 June 2002.

Pilots hunting records wake at dawn to see if there are clouds streaming in from the south east and the Gulf of Mexico. Ready to launch by 8.30am they tow 1,000 m up – above the clouds – before releasing and flying downwind. After 10 km or so they find themselves back down at early morning cloudbase where they start to scratch.

The first 70 km is difficult terrain, so land-outs are a no-no. “Combine weak lift, a low cloud base, restricted landing areas, and difficult retrieves, and some pilots feel the adventure is more than they are willing to take on,” says Davis, “even for the chance to set a world record.”

Read the rest in issue 133 of Cross Country magazine, available as a download through Zinio.com or as a back issue

Cross Country magazine: L'homme volant

2010-12-31T00:27:00.000Z

Cross Country, issue 133, Jan/Feb 2011

Yann Martail’s decision to quit his job and go flying paid off at the end of last year when he won one of paragliding’s biggest prizes – the PWC Superfinal. This year he wants to do it all again. By Ed Ewing

Sometimes, nice guys do finish first. Ask anyone on the Paragliding World Cup circuit about this year’s winner and you get the same response, “Yann? He’s a nice guy.” The French pilot scooped the biggest prize of the year when he flew consistently and well at the Superfinal in Turkey in September last year. Across the seven tasks his positions were 12, 23, 56, 14, 8, 70 and 7. On the face of it, those are ok, but they don’t really look strong enough to win, do they? As ever, consistency was key.

“Consistency”, says Yann Martail, “was my main goal for 2010.” Until now, he says, that had been his main difficulty with comp flying. “Until 2010 I had a problem with it. I could do well on one task or two, but rarely three.” He adds, “I guess I found the recipe for 2010!”
The year started well for the Superfinal champion. “I went to the Montegrappa Trophy and ended second. Then I when to a French League comp in St André and won.”

After that though, things started to go wrong…

Read the full 1,800 word article in Cross Country 133, available by subscription or through Zinio.com

Paramotor Magazine: White Whales

2010-12-31T00:19:00.001Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 22, Dec 2010/Jan 2011

Surveying beluga whales in freezing open sea sounded a step too far for Alexander Bogdanov. But, as he explained to Ed Ewing, he and Vladimir Makurin pulled it off

IN RUSSIA'S EAST, about 8,000 km from Moscow, lies the Sea of Okhotsk. Icebound in winter, in summer it teems with wildlife. Long, low, narrow islands slide out of the waves here, rising mere feet above sea level. They form a wildlife sanctuary for birds: red-necked stints, whimbrels, bar-tailed godwits and thousands of common sandpipers.

No one lives here year round. Only one group make their seasonal home here each summer, and they are here for a purpose. Far out to sea, some 10 to 15 km offshore, the sea is home to white whales, belugas, which feed in their thousands here on millions of migrating salmon and spawning herring.

Estimates put their numbers at perhaps 10,000, although no one really knows. The men are fishermen and as well as fishing they are here to catch white whales. Each season they are licensed to take a dozen or so young for marine parks around the world.

1,700 words. Read this account of what was a frankly stunning adventure in Paramotor Magazine, only on subscription

Paramotor Magazine: Provence

2010-12-31T00:12:00.001Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 22, Dec/Jan 2010/2011

Ed Ewing discovers Provence

NORTH OF THE LUBERON, beyond the citadel of Sisteron, in a valley full of orchards and lavender fields, lies Laragne. On market days the town fills with traders selling food and wares from across Provence.

Mellow scented soaps, decorative bottles of oil, goats’ cheeses, salamis, tomatoes and hams. Unlike the rarefied, anglicised Cote d’Azur to the south, this is a France of the French.

Petanque is played in the car park and Pernod is drunk from hi-balls in the bars. In neighbouring Ribiers, where a fountain in the village square provides the only movement on a lazy Sunday afternoon, drivers pass through with barely a glance, travelling the scenic route south to Marseille or across the mountains to Nice.

Yet this is the centre of a very special place. A place of flight, where dreams are made...

1,500 words. Read more on subscription through Paramotor Magazine

Cross Country 132

2010-12-05T22:26:00.001Z

Issue 132 of Cross Country was an acro special, including a free poster by acro legend Raul Rodriguez. The main feature was written by Pal Takats, a Hungarian acro paragliding superstar.

Elsewhere, among a lot else, I wrote up a brief report with some photos from the Azores Paragliding Festival that I was invited to back in August.

The latest issue is available via subscription or through Zinio.com.

Cross Country: Kirsty Cameron

2010-12-05T10:43:00.004Z

Cross Country, issue 132, November / December 2010

KIRSTY CAMERON is a laugh. Meeting her in west London, where she works in IT for a local council, she is immediately down to earth and down to business. “I know a pub about 10 minutes away,” she says as she sets off through the crowds of lunchtime office workers.

It’s a crisp, blue-sky autumn day and the talk naturally turns to that most-British obsession: house prices. She has just bought a house outside London, closer to her local flying sites but further away from work. More space, smaller mortgage, longer commute, but it’s ok, is the gist. Before the move she spent seven years renting in this part of London and she is clearly on home turf. “I told you it’d be empty,” she says as we walk through the door of the Red Lion.

“It’s been a really busy year,” she says as we sit down. It has. This year Kirsty was crowned British Women’s Champion for the third year in a row, won the Women’s Paragliding Open in Ager, spent two weeks in the rain at the European Championships in Austria, flew her first British-100 km, competed in her first PWC and generally got to grips with being a force to be reckoned with. She came 11th overall in the British Championships this year, and was second overall in Serial Class, something she’s prouder of than winning the women’s title. It means she’s up there as a pilot, not as a ‘woman pilot’, of which more later.

More in issue 132 of Cross Country magazine (subscription required)

Midwinter Uplift

2010-12-03T22:52:00.001Z

I'm talking at the Midwinter Uplift festival on Saturday 4 December 2010. This one day film and talks festival is in Shrewsbury, England, and is about all things flying. I'll be presenting my pick of the Cross Country year – my personal 10 best stories from the past year – plus a couple of the movies from XC360, Cross Country's 2010 short film competition that we ran for the first time this year. It's raising money for the local air ambulance and is being put on by one of the country's biggest paragliding and hang gliding clubs.

Tickets are £10, from 10.30am to 9.30pm.

Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild - award

2010-11-11T16:19:00.006Z

I AM very happy to have, ahem, won an award for a words and photos piece I did for the Guardian Travel desk last year. The award for excellence from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild (OWPG) was for an audio slideshow published on Guardian.co.uk Travel about Olinda Carnival in Brazil.

Thanks to the OWPG, the Guardian Travel desk for being so good at putting this type of thing together, and to fellow Brazil traveller James for helping take photos, record sound and sharing the pain of trying to upload 80 MB of photos on a carnival sunday in Recife.

Free flight night at Kendal Mountain Festival

2010-11-03T16:28:00.004Z

I'll be talking at the Free Flight night of the Kendal Mountain Festival on 18 November 2010.

Free flying in the Himalaya
From hang gliding K2 to flying hundreds of kilometres through the mightiest mountains on Earth ... Join Ed Ewing, editor of international free flight magazine Cross Country (www.xcmag.com), on a journey through thin air as he reveals the people, the flights and the adventure behind the new Himalayan golden age of exploration. With spectacular images from some of the best pilots in the world, this is one not be missed.

I've given this talk a couple of times now - once at the Ozone Chabre Open in Laragne, France in June this year, and once at the Azores Paragliding Festival in the Azores, Portugal, in August.

Tickets for the free flight night at Kendal are £11.50. Should be good!

Cross Country: Infinite Tandem / Blogging the Coupe Icare

2010-09-28T20:14:00.005Z

Cross Country magazine, issue 131, Sept / Oct 2010

In May Pál Takáts and Gábor Kézi took a tandem and exploded it in the sky above Olu Deniz. In August they finally pulled off what they’d been trying all along: Infinite Tumbling a tandem. Hold on to your hats… By Ed Ewing

Pál Takáts and Gábor Kézi are well known in the paragliding world, both as expert acro pilots, and, in Pal’s case, as a Red Bull X-Alps pilot. Now, in their latest endeavour, they’ve opened another door in the acro world. And this time, potentially, we can all have a go.

Because together, they successfully Infinite Tumbled a tandem glider, rotating their specially designed 31 sq m U-Turn wing 45 times above the Walensee in Switzerland on 7 August.

They went on to make three further successful flights, during which the pair discovered that contrary to what they had planned for, it is possible for the pilot alone to execute the manoeuvre without the help of the passenger.

The pair had designed a special dual-brake system so the passenger could help pull on the brakes to exit the Infinite Tumble. However, after completing a total of 200 tumbles Pal now says it’s possible to “execute everything safely” without the help of the passenger.

That opens up the possibility of people paying top acro pilots like Pal to take them on Infinite Tandems – something Pal is set to pursue this October in Ölüdeniz.

Billed as “the strongest paraglider ever built” the wing has a reinforced inner structure and extra thick lines. The combined strength of the upper line cascades was calculated to withstand a maximum load of 8.2 tonnes and the main lines 5.2 tonnes.

The need for U-Turn to build such a super-strong wing had become apparent after the Hungarian duo exploded all the A, B and C lines on their glider while practising above Oludeniz in May.

However, despite the setback Pál and Gabor got back on their horse, asked for a set of extra strong lines and a new glider and showcased the Infinite Tandem to the world in August in Switzerland. The film of the event, uploaded the next day to YouTube, instantly became an online acro hit.

So how did they make it work?

Read more (2,000 words) in issue 130 of Cross Country magazine, by subscription or through Zinio.com

PLUS: Blogging the Coupe Icare

Blogging from the Coupe Icare, France, over a weekend in mid-September. It rained for three days – :( – but then the sun came out on Sunday :).

Cross Country: Nova Dasalla

2010-09-28T19:58:00.004Z

Cross Country magazine, issue 131, Sept / Oct 2010

He’s on the way up, and has all guns blazing. Ed Ewing talks to the US’s number one acro guy

You had a crash last year. What happened?
I was doing a Misty-to-Helico too low and too close to the North Side at Point of the Mountain, Utah. Even though it’s a trick I’ve done hundreds of times, it just takes that one mistake which gets you into trouble. I got twisted a few times, auto-rotated, tried to fix it, then threw the rescue too late. As soon as it started to inflate, I slammed right in. Luckily, my legs hit first which is why I’m still alive… Read more, 1,500 words...

Read the whole thing in issue 131 of Cross Country magazine, by subscription or through Zinio.com

Paramotor Magazine: ‘Crash, Bang, Wallop’

2010-09-28T19:51:00.006Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 20, August / September 2010

He is the man beneath the flying helmet of YouTube’s premier paramotoring star, PPG for Morons. Ed Ewing speaks to Paul Anthem

Whether it’s buying a cheap paraglider from eBay and crashing it, hitting village washing lines while distributing church pamphlets from the air, getting stuck on top of the Statue of Liberty, or perhaps most famously, landing in the ring in the middle of a Tyson fight, the fringe of this sport has its fair share of well, oddness.

The star of PPG for Morons knows all about this type of inflight bad behaviour. He’s always crashing weddings, landing in lakes, setting himself on fire or getting others in trouble. Somehow he always gets away with it.

If you haven’t seen him yet, then find a computer and check him out on YouTube. The creation of Ohio pilot Paul Anthem, 45, he’s a bumbling fool who manages to miss losing fingers and friends only by a whisker in every short film.

On the cusp of internet stardom some of Paul’s videos have been viewed over 100,000 times, and he has made literally dozens. All feature him and his paramotor... (1,500 words)

Read more in Paramotor Magazine, by subscription or through Zinio.com

Cross Country: History of Paragliding in the Himalaya

2010-09-28T19:11:00.006Z

Cross Country magazine, issue 130, July / August 2010

I've been researching the history of paragliding and hang gliding in the Himalaya. It started out as a timeline to go with this article on an epic paragliding vol bivouac by a group of pilots in the Himalaya in spring 2010. They covered 1,200 km across India and Nepal – record breaking.

I turned it into a talk for the Chabre Open, a fun paragliding comp in France in June, and also for the Azores Paragliding Festival at the end of August. It's a work in progress – history has a way of being rewritten more than once!

What's interesting is what people didn't know – so Adam Hill, who is Mr Paragliding in Nepal, didn't know hang glider pilots had been there just a few years before. And it attracted a few emails from French pilots who knew more too.

Nothing from Japan though, which surprised me as they're pretty big on going extreme in the Himalaya and Karakoram. Anyway, here are highlights from the first few years…

HIMALAYAN TIMELINE

1979
As part of a French expedition to climb K2’s south-west ridge, known as The Magic Line, Jean-Marc Boivin, 28, launches his hang glider from 7,600 m on K2. Flight lasts 13 minutes for 2,600 m descent.

1983-1985
Australian instructor Ian Jarman leads three month-long hang gliding trips to Nepal, including flying Sarangkot and the Kali Gandaki. Reach 5,000 m in wave in front of Annapurna South in April 1984.

1984
A road is built to launch at Billing, India, to hosts a hang gliding invitational featuring some of the best pilots in the world. Held in May, conditions are murky and difficult, and German pilot Roman Mennig dies on landing after the first task. Described in detail in Judy Leden’s Flying with Condors.

1985
Jean-Marc Boivin sets altitude launch record by hang gliding from Gasherbrum II at 8,035 m following successful Alpine-style ascent. Expedition film, L'Oiseau Rare, is made.

1986
US hang glider pilots Steve McKinney and Larry Tudor attempt to fly from Everest in autumn. Logistics and poor weather mean failure but Steve flies from low on the West Ridge.

1986/7
Leading French alpinist Patrick Cordier flies a paraglider from the ‘rubble dome’ in the Hunza Valley, Pakistan. Thought to be the first paragliding in the region.

1988
On a climbing expedition John Silvester and others fly paragliders from the rubble dome in Hunza. John launches from 4,600 m Hon Pass. “I even put in a whole 360, which felt a bit risky with 2.5 glide and little experience.”

1988
Jean-Marc Boivin flies a paraglider from the summit of Everest on 26 September. After 90-minutes preparation his 3,000 m descent takes 11 minutes...

Cross Country Travel Guide 2010 / 11

2010-07-02T22:06:00.017Z

We're sorry, your browser doesn't support IFrames. You can still visit this item., however.

The first Cross Country magazine travel guide features 22 flying sites from around the world – we put it together over winter with the help of experts in every country. It's 100 pages this year, next year we'll do more!

Download it as a free pdf online here
Open preview in a new window

Cross Country: Shock and Awe

2010-07-02T21:54:00.004Z

Cross Country magazine, issue 130, July / August 2010

Hit by bad weather and a crisis over testing, the Europeans threatened to be a washout. But a brilliant last task showed paragliding and the pilots at their finest

Italy’s Luca Donini wasn’t the only winner at the European Paragliding Championships in Austria in June. Ozone won too: their Mantra R10.2 (the .2 stands for two lines) dominated the rankings, and was flown to every step on the main podium.

Only a few days before the comp, and with no more R10.2s in Europe, Ozone boss Mike Cavanagh lent Luca his own personal wing after the richly-decorated pilot got in touch to borrow a glider. “I think we’ll let him keep it,” Cavanagh said with a cat-who’s-got-the-cream grin after the won.

Meanwhile, there was one very sorry poor loser. Will anyone ever hold a competition in Austria again? After the Women’s World Hang Gliding Championships, held up the road in Tegelberg, were literally snowed under (they brushed 30 cm of snow off the launch in the vain hope of getting a task one day) and all the competition prizes donated by sponsor Adidas were handed out by raffle, there was some hope that the Euro PG Championships, held 23 May to 5 June, would see a bit of sun.

Not a bit of it. Rain and poor weather meant only one big task truly worthy of the calibre of pilots involved was called – and that on the very last day. Weatherbound, politics reared its head: it was possible to follow the hair-splitting in realtime online.

This is not what they had in mind when organisers proudly announced ‘live tracking’ a few months ago. It wasn’t meant to be like this...

Read more, including interviews with the champions, in Cross Country

Paramotor Magazine: Infinity and Beyond

2010-07-02T21:46:00.004Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 19, June / July 2010

Hernan Pitocco Infinite Tumbled his paramotor in April. Another astonishing first from this master of the air. By Ed Ewing

La Cumbre, Argentina, is a laidback town. Somewhat off the beaten track to the north of Cordoba, itself an overnight bus journey from the capital Buenos Aires, it sits in a broad valley surrounded by hills that slope up to forested mountains. It is wine country, and weekend-getaway country.

The main street is a place for browsing the New-Age crystal shops and hippy-chic while holding hands and sipping coffee. Outside the town, rambling, rundown wooden houses prick at dreams of running away and living the good life forever, while rusty old pickups trundle up dusty tracks to distant hills.

If the wild mountains and glaciers of Patagonia are Argentina’s Alaska, then La Cumbre is Marin County, California, home to big spaces, free time and outdoor living under the sun. It’s chillout central.

This is where Hernan Pitocco lives and works, flying tandems at nearby Cuchi Corral for $60 a pop, and flying acro when he isn’t...

Read more (1,800 words) in Paramotor Magazine

Cross Country: Northern Lights

2010-07-02T21:35:00.006Z

Cross Country magazine, issue 129, May / June 2010

Norway, Sweden and Finland offer spectacular flying in remote, wild landscapes. Ed Ewing rounds up the storytellers.

“There are maybe 10 sea eagles at this site.” Vergard Mellem had the sort of fine-lined, ageless face that wind and mountains make – he could be 35 or 50. He was kicking his way up snowy steps to the launch at Ersfjord, a small though spectacular soaring site near Tromso, gateway to the Arctic and capital of northern Norway.

It was the end of winter, and a week’s ski touring in the Lyngen Alps had been combined with some paragliding. Brand new ski-mountaineering Scarpa Spirit 4 boots had got me to the top of several peaks, borrowed skis back down again. Midweek I looked up the Tromso Paragliding Club (www.thpk.no), at 70-degrees north surely one of the most northerly flying clubs in the world.

Flying here is easy. There are 10 sites nearby, a cable car and launch site right in town, a 50 km out and return along a spectacular glaciated valley in summer, and flying 24-hours a day under the midnight sun. However, summer is short. Winter is spent soaring Ersfjord, a hillside 15 minutes from town.

Bound by two fjords the wind blows steadily here in the morning but slackens in the afternoon. Pilots wear army-issue Arctic footwear, double mitts, handwarmers and full-face helmets while soaring against a landscape of frozen mountains plunging sheer into the sea. Sea thermals, Vergard explained, are common.

They work when the land is frozen, to minus 10 C, and the sea is at a regular 4 C. Then you can climb 500 m from this little site. Cross country exploration is on a nudge-nudge basis. You fly a little across the mountainous terrain, get as far as you dare, and come back to where you can land. There is a lot of sea about.

We flew, and I got a sense of it, rounding a corner to the spectacular sight of the Kvolya peninsula and its rock giants, guardians of the fjord. After that there is not a lot else but the Arctic Ocean.

Read more, (eight pages, 3,000 words) in Cross Country

Cross Country: Lone Star

2010-07-02T21:31:00.002Z

Cross Country magazine, issue 129, May / June 2010

Kurt Eder flies where he was born and lives to fly. It’s no wonder he’s so good. By Ed Ewing

Kurt Eder. The very name sounds out there, like Hans Solo, or Skywalker. Like those movie-world warriors Kurt Eder seems to move in another dimension to the rest.

He is a pilot’s pilot, a lone eagle, a competitive spirit teamed with an independent mind. He doesn’t fly competitions – doesn’t like them – but his cross country record is something else. Starting in 2004 he placed fifth in the OLC (the online contest – where thousands of pilots worldwide log their cross country flying), then came second the next year and third in 2006.

In 2007 he switched to logging his flights at XContest and came first that year. He placed fifth again in the XContest in 2008 before winning it for a second time in 2009.

This consistently high level of achievement cannot be overstated. A look at his 2009 flight record reveals he flew 48 cross country flights, with his six top flights all massive 200+km triangles. Every day it is flyable, he is flying.

His home site is Speikboden, an Italian ski resort close to the Austrian border in South Tyrol. The name Speikboden sounds like it could be a dangerous race of droids. I wonder, is Kurt Eder in fact Darth Vader?

Read more (1,500 words) in Cross Country

Cross Country: Sky Gods For Hire

2010-07-02T21:25:00.003Z

Cross Country magazine, issue 129, May / June 2010

Fly with a guide and you can skip weeks of do-it-yourself learning – but you want a sky god for a guide, not a cowboy. Is it time for an internationally recognised standard for fly-guides? By Ed Ewing

Standing in an airfield in southern France glider pilot Louis Poiller, a retired Swiss architect, explained why he has flown with world-record holder Klaus Ohlmann for 20 years. “You learn such a lot,” he said, “his depth of experience is immense.”

We had just landed after a five-hour, 500 km flight – Klaus called it “a short one”. I’d been in the passenger seat with Klaus while Louis, who has flown gliders since 1979, followed about 50 m behind.

“He teaches you how to fly big distances, at speed, through the Alps,” he said. Louis is an experienced pilot but still feels he can learn more, and likes to do so at the hands of the best. Ohlmann holds 13 world records, and every day in the summer flies hundreds of kilometres through the Alps, often with a gaggle of pilots right behind him, all keen to learn from the master.

While in gliding, like climbing, skiing, diving and many other adventure sports this type of nose-to-tail guiding is common, structured and organised, in the paragliding and hang gliding world it’s a lot less so. Many pilots go on cross country courses, often considered a form of advanced instruction, some pay a local pilot to help them out with ground support and site briefings, but it is rarer to pay to be guided mother-duck style, like Ohlmann does in the sailplane world, on a hang glider or paraglider.

Yet it can be argued that free flying, more than many other sports, is about going to the right places and avoiding the wrong places. What better way to learn where those places are than to be guided by the hand of an experienced pilot whose decision-making you trust?

Many would say that free-flying guides play the role of mentor, passing on skills and knowledge. If that is the case, goes the argument, why then is there no internationally recognised qualification to ‘fly guide’? Instead, most flying guides are forced to operate beneath the radar of officialdom and under scarce or non-existent insurance policies.

Read more (3,400 words) in Cross Country magazine

Video: Lyngen, Norway

2010-04-16T08:36:00.004Z

'Research' in Lyngen, Arctic Norway. Mountains and hills featured include Storgalten, Tafeltinden, Uloya Ulisuolu, Fastdalstinden and Ersfjord. Includes two short ski crashes half way through

Paramotor Magazine: Tom de Dorlodot

2010-04-16T08:28:00.003Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 18, April / May 2010

‘I just love it all.’ Thomas de Dorlodot isn’t afraid to push the boundaries. From flying the Red Bull X-Alps to paramotoring K2, he’s your man. By Bob Drury and Ed Ewing

“I’m just back from two months in the Himalayas.” According to his latest blog entry Thomas de Dorlodot has fallen in love with flying all over again. This time it’s acro. “I went to the famous Pokhara in Nepal and had six flights a day above water for 30 days.”

Like him, Thomas’s blog doesn’t sit still for a second. In 184 words he covers two months, two countries, 3,000 km, one motorbike adventure, hundreds of flights, one new flying discipline (acro) and the making of a short film.

A look at his CV confirms it has always been like this. After being student president at his school in Belgium and playing rugby at a high level, he studied communications in Brussels followed by a two-year masters in photography at the school of art in Granada, Spain.

In 2007, aged 21, he was the youngest-ever athlete to compete in the Red Bull X-Alps (hike, run and free-fly 800 km across the Alps as fast as you can – against the wind). He loved it so much he did it again in 2009...

Read the rest online, subscription required

Listen to the podcast of this interview

Cross Country: Ama Dablam interview and podcast

2010-04-16T08:02:00.005Z

Cross Country magazine, March / April 2010

An interview with Stuart Holmes who climbed and flew from Ama Dablam in Nepal

British paraglider pilot Stuart Holmes became the first person to speed fly from the summit of Ama Dablam on 21 November last year. He launched a Gin Yak from the very top of the 6,812 m mountain and completed the 2,300 m descent in 10 minutes. In total he spent only 27 hours on the mountain, compared to an average climbing time of five days.

“By the time I got there the base camp was set up and all the logisitics were in place. All I had to do was climb up and fly off,” he said from his home in England’s Lake District...

Read more online, subscription required

Also online at www.xcmag.com as a podcast

Cross Country: Game of Shadows

2010-04-16T07:38:00.006Z

Cross Country magazine 128, March / April 2010

Cross Country's main feature was an incredible tale from Namibia by Vianney Tisseau, a French hang glider pilot. It's brilliant when you get photos like his land in your lap. He is a pro snowboard photographer for his day job, and is well used to getting magazine covers and big photo spreads, but he was genuinely over the moon to end up of the front cover of Cross Country. I introduced the piece for him...

The third Namibian Record Encampment, organised by French pilots Gil Souviron and Fred Pignet, was meant to be the biggest and best yet. Instead it threw up tragedy when a car crash killed French champion Jean Charles Balembois. Record hunting was put on hold and then tinged with sadness. But, as Vianney Tisseau’s photographs and diary reveal, when they did fall, it was with style

***

Burgsdorf is not even on the map. The closest you get is Maltahohe, a small town of 2,400 people 110 km west of the Hardap region in Namibia. Maltahohe is known for its country hotel – the oldest in Namibia at 103-years-old – its farming, and its 40C baking desert heat.

Some 25 km south is the 13,000-hectare cattle farm of Burgsdorf. Burgsdorf is known for its isolation – its nearest neighbour is 10 km away – and its comfort. Nine double rooms, grassy lawns, two friendly ‘pet’ cheetahs, and a pool make it a relaxing spot. A farm airstrip with eight runways scratched into the red desert dirt like a compass rose makes it perfect for towing.
Next door is an 85,000 hectare fenced-in game park. African big game is bred here and game hunters come from across the world to bag a kill.

But in recent years hunters of another sort have discovered the place. The Germans found it first, then in 2008 Gil Souviron, one of France’s most fervent hunters of big distance, mounted his first expedition, bringing pilots south from Europe in winter to fly big out-and-returns and triangles using the light winds and 4,500 m to 6,000 m cloudbases that set up on a good day.
His team returned triumphant and inspired, with two circuits of 400 km flown, and four world records broken.

His story of mega convergence lines, Morning Glory-like roll clouds, and eight-hour flights with a landing back at the ranch was headlined ‘The Calling’ and his quote, “This is the place I have been looking for all my life” resonated throughout the hang gliding world.

He returned again the next year for a second record encampment, but the worst weather in 30 years brought rain to the desert and flooded the runways. “Namibia is still, I think, the most beautiful place to fly,” he wrote in 2009. Then he put out the call to establish an ever bigger, longer camp for the 2009/10 season...

Read the rest online, subscription required

See what's in Cross Country 128

XCmag.com: Live blogging

2010-02-26T08:22:00.007Z

XCmag.com, 18 - 21 February 2010

Several articles, videos interviews and live blogging from the CIVL plenary - an annual international meeting on free flight competition.

In chronological order:

A CIVL Debate
The governing body of competition paragliding, the Commission Internationale de Vol Libre, otherwise known as CIVL, meets next week to discuss, among other things, whether or not to allow carbon technology in paragliders in competition.

The debate has been a rough one so far. After winning the Paragliding World Cup Superfinal in September 2009 with its BBHPP, Ozone revealed their winning paraglider uses flexible carbon rods chordwise across the glider. The result is a wing that glides better than anything else...

Day 1: Helmets, harnesses and the agenda
Day 2: The big debates
Day 3: Voting starts
Day 4: Final day

Paramotor Magazine: Reindeer Man

2010-02-26T08:14:00.003Z

Paramotor Magazine, Issue 17

February / March 2010

Olof Heikka was the first Sami reindeer herder to swap his skidoo for a paramotor in the frozen north. By Ed Ewing. Photographs: Dan Burton

Olof Heikka’s internet Skype icon has a little notice beside it. It says, “Reindeer work take all my time now.” Olof is, almost unbelievably, magically even, in this northern season of snow, ice and cold, a paramotoring reindeer herder.

More than that, he is a traditional Sami reindeer herder, working high above the Arctic Circle at the very top of the world. When I hear about him, it’s as if Santa Claus has just come buzzing in on his trike and tandem wing, looking for a place to land.

“Where to start?” he asks in English when I finally reach him on Skype – internet phone – one evening in mid-January. “I’m a reindeer herder. I’m a Sami people, the first people in Scandinavia. I have been reindeer herding since I was born.

"My father was a reindeer herder, my grandfather was a reindeer herder. So I learnt to work with reindeer since I was a young boy.”

There are an estimated 3,000 Sami reindeer herders in Europe, part of the 80,000 to 135,000 Sami who live in the Nordic countries. They have herded reindeer across the top of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia for some 500 years. Before that, they hunted wild reindeer in the forest.

One of the first peoples in Europe the Sami are indigenous to the region – thought to have lived above the Arctic circle for almost 3,000 years. The DNA ‘family-tree’ suggests they started their migration north from Catalonia and Basque regions of southern Europe between 10,000 – 15,000 years ago.

They are one of Europe’s first – and last – indigenous groups...

Paramotor Magazine: Direct Action

2010-02-26T08:07:00.004Z

Paramotor Magazine, Issue 17

February / March 2010

Greenpeace is at the forefront of using paramotors for environmental activism. But it wants to get better at it, discovers Ed Ewing

Heath Hanson works for Greenpeace. Based out of Amsterdam he’s sailed ships down to Antarctica, organised climbers to scale power stations, targeted polluters and protested whaling. “My role is international actions and logistics coordinator,” he says. “I do all of the international coordination for our direct actions and acts of civil disobedience.”

He’s been in Amsterdam – Greenpeace’s global HQ – for just under a year. Before that he was in Washington DC for three years, the capital city of his home country. “It does require a relatively unique skillset,” he says of his job. “Most of my colleagues around the world are jack of all trades,” he says, although he does add, “one is a former chief engineer for a Russian nuclear submarine”.

He meanwhile, “Is a scuba instructor, I’m a ship’s captain, I’m an arc welder, I’m an engineer, and I have various chemical backgrounds.”

The newest string to his bow is paramotor enthusiast. Because although he doesn’t fly himself – he’s been up tandem – he is set to expand the use of them in Greenpeace activities around the world. “I know five Greenpeace offices around the world have them,” he says. “We have less than a dozen worldwide.”

He hopes that number will increase...

Paramotor Magazine: Surf’s Up! 4,000 km of it

2010-02-26T08:03:00.003Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 17

February / March 2010

Take one national TV star, add paramotor, stormy weather, wind and a 4,000 km journey. Shake. Stew for 50 days. Ed Ewing tucks into Lu Marini’s Brazilian adventure

“It was a gift from God,” says Brazilian pilot Lu Marini who last year completed a spectacular 4,000 km trip along the coastline of Brazil. He had just taken off, and had covered a mere 15 km – barely enough time to get comfortable – when he saw an incredible sight. “I was over the sea, near the coast, when I saw something very big move. I knew it could be a whale. I went to her and there were two females, two young and four dolphins.”

Right whales have a troubled recent history with Brazil. Nowadays, they can be spotted from the beach at surf spots like Joaquina beach on the island of Santa Catarina in the country’s south. Each year they migrate from Antarctic waters, where they spend the summer, to the warmer waters around Brazil to breed.

Whale watching tours are a fixture in the season, which runs from July to November. But it wasn’t always like that – the last Right whale was brought ashore on Santa Catarina in 1973. They had been hunted down, almost to extinction. When whaling was finally outlawed in Brazil in 1987 there were no whales left.

Twenty three years on and Lu found himself above two mothers and their calves. He piloted in close to capture some stunning film and still photographs. “I was flying over the whales at low altitude,” he said. “I risked a lot.”

Lu Marini is an entrepreneur, adventurer and TV personality at home in Brazil…

Cross Country: Brazil Special

2010-01-26T23:17:00.005Z

Cross Country, issue 127

January / February 2010

Sunshine all year and cumulus to the horizon, Brazil has it all. Ed Ewing goes native

“We don’t have winter in Brazil,” says Frank Brown, Brazil’s paragliding champion. “It’s endless summer, we can fly every day.” And he’s not talking ridge soaring. He’s talking ripping thermals, endless horizons, convergence lines and cumulus clouds dotted like chess pieces in the sky.

The country is bigger than Australia, stretches from four-degrees north to 33 degrees south, and could have been invented for free flight. From barefoot soaring on the beach to record chasing in the outback, this country has literally hundreds of flying sites.

Names like Quixada, Araxa and Governador Valadares evoke images of screaming up to base above a land parched of water, a long day of awesome flatland flying ahead, with unknown adventures getting home.

But there is so much more than just the headline sites. Castelo for example, well known as a Paragliding World Cup venue, is just one of 30 or so sites in the immediate area. There are dozens of sites with 200 km+ potential, miles of soarable coastline, adventures to be had in the mountains, rainforest, the heat of the outback, above the world’s biggest wetlands or looking down on one of the world’s most exciting cities. A handful of sites grab the international XC headlines, yes, but there are lots more waiting to be discovered. All you have to do is ask.

Roberto Novaes Hering spread out a map of Brazil and underlined Governador Valadares, surely the jewel in Brazil’s crown. “There are 10 m/s climbs here,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “January is strong,” eyebrows again, “but February and March is truly classic.” The 800 m rock face that is the thermal goldmine of GV is black, sheer and bakes in the sun – it’s a supersonic ride to base 1,000 m above you…

Nine pages, 3,500 words. Read more in Cross Country magazine, subscription required

Cross Country: Spanish Fly

2010-01-26T23:11:00.007Z

Cross Country magazine

January / February 2010

As most of Europe shivers, one part of Spain basks in eternal sunshine. Ed Ewing discovers Andalucia

FELIX passed the pipe. The old man turned, spat on his fingers and, in one swift corkscrew movement, popped out his false eye. “I raise you an eyeball,” he whispered, his voice barely audible through the thick smoke.

I looked at Felix. He was bleeding from his left hand, where he had given up a pinkie. But the game was still on. Lost deep in the mountains of Azirastan we were in a game of chance that had only one possible outcome … screech … actually, it wasn’t like that at all.

Having read one or two of Felix Wolk’s paragliding travel articles, and seen his photographs, I was looking forward to spending some time either flying upside down while drinking local arak, lost in some jungle, or in the bar being wooed by mysterious opiates.

Instead, I was sipping wine, trying not to gulp it, while tinkering with tapas and listening to the Andalucian minister of tourism on my right. “We feel that Andalucia is not a geographical destination, it is more than that, it is a feeling…”

On my left Felix was looking spruced up, like a Teutonic hairdresser’s model, in a clean shirt and with Because-I’m-Worth-It hair. Dotted around the table were other writers and editors from paragliding magazines. Chatter, chatter, chatter they went in French, while toying with olives. I wiped the rim of my glass, hoping no one would see.

The rock towers of El Yelmo had appeared through the trees like an enchanted castle in the forest. The journey had taken us through the olive groves of the plains, skirted the still snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada and brought us over the pine-forested hills and gorges of the Sierra de Cazorla. We had arrived in paradise… (2,000 words)

Cross Country: Paragliding from Manaslu

2010-01-07T21:08:00.003Z

Michel Rudolf, very cold, and very high, in the Himalaya. Photo: Michel Rudolf

Cross Country magazine
Web exclusive, January 2010

What's it like to climb an 8,000 m peak and fly off it on a sub-3 kg paraglider? French pilot Michel Rudolf climbed and flew from the mountain last year. 'It was very cold,' he says, 'minus-20C inside the tent.'

TELL ME ABOUT Manaslu – what sort of mountain is it?
Manaslu is a beautiful mountain north west of Kathmandu in Nepal, not far from the Annapurna range. Access is quite hard – it’s a six-day hike, but the climbing is not so difficult. It’s a little harder than Cho Oyu. Due to administrative complications on Cho Oyu and Shishapangma these last years, there are more expeditions on Manaslu now. At the time we were there, we guess that about 10 other expeditions were trying to climb the mountain...

Read the whole article here...

Paramotor Magazine: Mark Olson: Professor Paramotor

2009-12-05T15:08:00.003Z

Paramotor Magazine
Issue 16, December 2009 / January 2010

Mark Olson studies tree tops in Mexico by paramotor – the results have made science sit up and take note. By Ed Ewing

“So much of the world is disappearing so quickly,” says Mark Olson, a 40-year-old professor of biology at Mexico City University. “And it’s becoming more and more urgent.”

Mark’s speciality is evolutionary biology. Specifically, he’s interested in trees and ‘tree crowns’, the tops of trees. To get there he uses a paramotor, flying 100 m above remnants of tropical rain forest (as opposed to tropical rain forest) in Mexico.

He flies over slowly, taking digital photos of his ‘specimen’ trees. He then goes back to the tree on the ground and climbs up, using a crossbow to shoot ropes over the high branches, before measuring all the different elements of the tree: trunk, branches, leaf size and crown area.

His findings, of what he describes as an “exploratory” study that measured 500 samples from 13 species, have pushed forward understanding, and made other biologists take note...

More on subscription...

Paramotor Magazine: Emilia Plak

2009-12-05T15:02:00.003Z

Paramotor Magazine, issue 16
December 2009 / January 2010

She is the uncrowned Women’s World Champion. Ed Ewing asked the Queen of paramotoring for an audience

There can’t be many paramotor pilots who have been featured in Cosmopolitan magazine, but Emilia Plak is one of them. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt she was photographed next to her motor, smiling out at the readers of the Polish version of the magazine.

She is exactly the sort of woman Cosmo, the world’s biggest selling women’s magazine, love. Young (she is 32); successful (she has her own company importing paramotor gear for Paramania and Swing and is also an instructor training 80 students a year); succeeding in a man’s world (she came fourth in this year’s World Championships, putting a few macho noses out of joint); and living a life full of adventure (she is off to Thailand, and recently spent two months travelling and flying in South America).

But there is more to her than a ‘Cosmo-babe’ label would imply...

More available on subscription

Cross Country: Manfred Ruhmer profile

2009-11-10T21:19:00.007Z

Cross Country magazine, issue 126

November / December 2009

Three World Champion wins, four European golds and 10 Austrian titles make Manfred Ruhmer a hang gliding legend. After retiring five years ago he made a surprise comeback to competition at this year’s Worlds. Ed Ewing met him

“SOONER OR LATER it will happen. I will get over it.” It is half way through the World Championships and Manfred Ruhmer, three times hang gliding World Champion and four times European Champion is talking about losing. He has just trounced the field with a spectacular win in Task 2, and is feeling good, but I ask what happens if he starts to lose.

He says: “At the beginning, you have to learn to lose to win. Then probably you are able to win. So if I lose again, then that’s OK.”

A week later and he had lost in a fairly startling way, by bombing out on the last task. But sitting in the sunshine of a French morning sipping coffee at a pavement café in Laragne, he is till firmly focused on winning. The field has only flown two tasks. He came in 16th on Task 1 but then showed he still had the Manfred magic by crossing the line on Task 2 literally miles – and 30 minutes – ahead of pretty much everyone else.

Manfred was, as he would say later, “back in the game!” And if he was going to fly like that every day, the other pilots may as well just go home.

He stayed more or less at the head of the field until the last task. But then he bombed, landing after just 17 km of a 154 km race, and blew his chances of winning the World Championship for a record fourth time. His reputation as a god-like pilot who doesn’t make mistakes was also blown. You could almost hear the collective thought ripple through the comp: “He’s mortal after all.”

Subscribe to read the full article (2,700 words)…

XCmag.com: Birdman of the Karakoram

2009-11-09T22:28:00.002Z

Alun Hughes (front) and John Silvester in the Karakoram

Cross Country, November 2009

Paragliding filmmaker Alun Hughes tells Ed Ewing what it’s like to fly tandem with John Silvester in the Karakoram

How many non flyers do you know who’d strap themselves to John Silvester’s tandem and head off into the remote Himalayas to make a film? It’s total commitment in one of the most dangerous places to fly a paraglider; one mistake by Silvester means you’re not going home.

Yet, for Alun Hughes, a 60-year-old Welshman, this isn’t even the first time he’s joined Silvester on one of his cutting edge Himalayan adventures – the first time was a decade ago, when the pair set off on an epic multiday vol bivouac adventure through the wilds of west Nepal and made the cult film From Nowhere to the Middle of Nowhere.

Now, a decade later “but none the wiser” Hughes has teamed up with ‘Silv’ again, this time for a high altitude adventure deep into Pakistan’s Karakoram mountains to cross never-before-flown terrain and open up a new extreme altitude cross country route.

Alun has been making adventure films for the past 20 years. A “climber really” he was there at the birth of ‘extreme’, “before it was a brand” and documented adventures in rock climbing and kayaking. Alun’s climbing film portfolio is extensive and includes Stone Monkey, a groundbreaking movie that won accolades around the world and starred British climbing legend Jonny Dawes and a young Cross Country magazine editor Bob Drury tackling some of Britain’s most difficult rock climbs.

Inspired by the antics of close friend John Silvester in the Himalayas in the late 1990s, Alun turned his focus on paragliding and joined Silv on his tandem to make From Nowhere to the Middle of Nowhere. A well known figure in the Welsh adventure film scene Alun has always been involved in more mainstream TV work working for BBC Wales and Welsh language channel S4C, more recently making adventure travel and wildlife films. However, over the summer of 2008 he decided to take a break from TV work and document a month of extreme paragliding in the Karakoram with high altitude maestro and old friend John Silvester.

The result is their second film together, the Birdman of the Karakoram, which has already won the ‘Human Endeavour’ prize at the Coupe Icare and is now making the rounds of mountain film festivals around the world – it’s on show at Banff this week (5 Nov). We spoke to Alun by phone at his home in North Wales just before he flew to Banff.

Read the full interview here

Listen to the podcast

Paramotor Magazine: Michel Carnet: Loaded Deck

2009-10-25T19:57:00.001Z

Paramotor Magazine
October / November 2009, issue 15

New Paramotor World Champion Michel Carnet is glad he won, but is now quitting international competition for good. He tells Ed Ewing why

So you had fun? The first question is always meant to be an ice-breaker, but in this case, the ice already seems pretty well broken.

“Actually no, it was a very painful championships, not very enjoyable.”

‘Painful’ is not a word you expect to come out of the mouth of a new World Champion, but after two weeks of battle at the sixth Paramotor World Championships in the Czech Republic in August, that is how Michel Carnet condenses his experience.

CIMA competitions, that’s the Worlds and the Europeans, are…” he searches for the right word, “just not very nice.”
“You do it because you want the title, you want to win, because you want the team to win, but they are actually not very nice at all.”

2,000 more words at www.paramotormag.com (subscription)

Paramotor Magazine: Record-Chasing in Pakistan

2009-10-25T19:55:00.000Z

Paramotor Magazine
October / November 2009, issue 15

Spain’s Ramon Morillas has been chasing altitude records in Pakistan this summer and made two flights above 7,000 m in September. The first was on 8 September when he flew to 7,354 m while flying close to Nanga Parbat. The second was on 19 September when flew at around 7,700 m on Masherbrum.

At 8,126 m Nanga Parbat is the ninth highest mountain on Earth, while Masherbrum at 7,821 m is the 22nd highest mountain in the world.
The first flight was ratified by an official FAI observer who is travelling with Ramon, the second is still to be given the all clear.

Speaking before the team set off to Pakistan in late August, Ramon’s flying partner, Thomas Dorlodot said, “The idea is to go to Nanga Parbat and fly over 8,000 m.”

Read more at www.paramotormag.com (subscription)

Paramotor Magazine: Reserve Tangle

2009-10-25T19:51:00.001Z

Paramotor Magazine
October / November 2009, issue 15

Rescue parachute ‘mega test’ opens can of worms

A large scale comparison test between different types of reserve parachutes has thrown up more questions than answers, and left some reserve makers furious over the results.

The ‘Grand Comparison’ of 41 reserves was carried out over two days at the end of March this year. It was organised by French paraglider testing house Air Turquoise and backed by the French and Swiss free flight associations.

However, the results of the test were so poor for some reserve parachutes that their manufacturers have refused to let the results be published, and even threatened to sue if they are.

Others, who did better, have been publicising their results...

1,500 word investigation into the obscure, in more ways than one, world of reserve parachute testing. Also published in Cross Country 125. Full story available by subscription at www.paramotormag.com

Paramotor Magazine: World Championships 2009

2009-10-25T19:47:00.003Z

Paramotor Magazine
October / November 2009, issue 15

The 2009 Paramotor World Championships threw up politics and passion in equal measure. We asked those who were there, ‘How was it for you?’

Who said it would be easy? The sixth FAI Paramotoring World Championships hit controversy from the word go.

First, the selection procedure: an impromptu bid from Lebanon won the day, promising big skies above the fertile fields of the Beqaa valley. Accepted and then, on second thoughts, rejected, the row left CIMA, the official body responsible for organising the World Championships, with egg on its face after belatedly realising that half the world’s governments advised against travel to the region for security reasons.

The Czech Republic then, seemed a safe bet, with its strong PPG scene, its airfield and its green and verdant rolling countryside. But then France, already in a pique over the decision not to stick with Lebanon, decided to boycott. A French colony until 1943 Lebanon this year hosted the Francophone Games – a sort of Olympic Games for French-speaking nations – and, sacre bleu, the French paramotor team wanted to be there too.

So boycott the World Championships they did…

Six pages on the World Championships, available by subscription at www.paramotormag.com

Cross Country: September 2009

2009-09-07T17:48:00.004Z

While the editor's away the mouse gets to play... August was spent editing Cross Country magazine, which meant a lot of work on the computer. Everyone is in different countries and time zones, which makes putting a magazine together trickier... Compared to working on the web, which is so mechanical, creating magazines feels much more involved.

The cover of a magazine for example, including this one of Pal Takats tumbling in the Alps, takes days to put together, from selection to completion. Online, processing this sort of photo would take a few minutes of rapid assessment and work... Print really has started to feel like another, quieter age. Despite that, I hope it lasts a long, long time - there's nowhere better to showcase photography, or proper, involved reporting and feature writing.

Cross Country: Alex Ploner profile

2009-09-07T17:44:00.003Z

Cross Country
September / October 2009, issue 125

An interview with the new hang gliding World Champion, Alex Ploner

The new World Champion Alex Ploner comes bounding to the table. We are outside Les Terrasses hotel in Laragne, France, and Ploner has just become World Champion. It is not yet official – that will come later – but the celebrations have already begun. There is an Italian flag draped around the table, a bottle of Martini sitting waiting and a long table with red check tablecloth laid out for over a dozen.

In front, the view is of the wooded slopes of Chabre, the steep-sided mountain that rises above Laragne-Monteglin in the heart of the Hautes Alpes, France. It has been the site of 12 days of intense competition. Pilots have only flown six tasks, but every day has counted – whether it is a day lost to the wind, a morning spent arguing over scores, or an afternoon at base above the mountains.

Read more (subscription)

Cross Country: The Great Game

2009-09-07T17:33:00.003Z

Cross Country
September / October 2009, issue 125

3,000 word report on the 17th World Hang Gliding Championships held in Laragne, France, summer 2009

Two weeks of high drama and top line competition, that’s what was promised by organisers of the 17th Hang Gliding World Championships and that’s what was delivered. Some 125 pilots from 33 countries gathered in Laragne, a sleepy market town in France, from 20 June to 4 July for the world’s most important hang gliding competition.

From the first day it was clear that the technical nature of flying in Laragne – an area of broad valleys, steep wooded hillsides and limestone cliffs with high mountains to the north – meant making even minor mistakes would end up costing a lot. And indeed, each task saw at least one big gun tumble out of the running following an early landing or tactical error. Get through this without making such a mistake and you’d stand a good chance of winning – conservative consistency with a dash of gutsy bravado when needed was to be key. Knowing when to switch gear between the two, crucial.

Read more (subscription only)

Cross Country: Team America

2009-09-07T17:27:00.004Z

Cross Country
September / October 2009, issue 125

The US team at the World Hang Gliding Championships was made up of some fun guys - great to meet them all. Every one a nice, genuine person - hence the profile

IT'S LIKE A POP BAND. There’s Dusty, the gum-chewing quiet one on drums, Zac, the zany wild guy on bass, Jeff Shapiro, the mild-mannered eagle-eyed friendly-guy-with-tattoos on lead guitar, and Jeff O’Brien, the straight-down-the-line lead singer. In the background, the pop impresario role is filled by Davis Straub, the older, devil-may-care voice behind the Oz Report, the hang gliding blog.

At the Hang Gliding World Championships they stood out because, well, they acted like a team. Unlike other nations (the big exception being Italy, the winners) they weren’t riven by intra-team feuds, soap-opera style selection dramas or clashing egos. And they were good. Jeff O’Brien won the first task, two of them made the top 10 (Zac Majors fourth, Dustin Martin seventh) and the team came sixth out of 32. Were they happy with that?

Read more (subscription only)

Guardian Travel: The experts' guide to UK National Parks

2009-07-29T15:17:00.004Z

Devil's Dyke, England. Photo: public domain

Guardian Travel

28 July 2009

The Guardian marked National Parks Week by doing a roundup of activities. Alongside outdoor swimming, walking, climbing and canoeing, my contribution was flying on the South Downs...

With nine sites either in or close to the new national park, the South Downs is one of the most popular places in the country to go paragliding. Devil's Dyke, just behind Brighton, boasts a road to the top, decent pub grub, and even a bus service in summer time, making it the perfect place to get your first taste of this exhilarating sport by taking a tandem flight with a licensed instructor. Given a gentle breeze, you will soon be floating above the hills, skimming your feet across the grassy slopes, and admiring the views for a good half hour or so. Although adventurous, tandem flights need no training - 91-year-old Reg Rose-Innes became Britain's oldest paraglider passenger here in 2006.

If you want to take things further, several schools offer courses, which will see you go solo in a day or two, and gain your first stage license within a week. Sussex school of paragliding, Airworks and Air Adventure are good places to start, with tandem flights from £125 and five day courses at around £500. Once hooked, you need to join the Southern hang and paragliding club to gain access to all the sites. Good pilots in the Southern Club regularly use thermals to fly 100 km or more from here. On a nice Sunday in summer sites can get crowded, but don't let that put you off: once up, you're free as a bird.

Cross Country: Red Bull X-Alps

2009-07-14T17:08:00.007Z

It's X-Alps season in the free flying world - the toughest adventure race on the planet which sees 30 competitors run and fly 800+ km across the Alps. Two features about it in this month's XC mag, one profile on a new competitor, the other addressing issues in the competition.

Tom Payne, Cross Country magazine
July/August 2009

“It's going to be painful,” says Tom Payne, British pilot, pgforum.com moderator and Alpine cross-country hound. “And frightening, and I’ll probably hate it from day two onwards. But what an adventure, both physically and mentally!” He is talking about taking part in the 2009 Red Bull X-Alps. “Who wouldn't jump at the chance?”

Tom, 33, is a modest man. Ask him what his biggest paragliding achievements are and he prefers not to say. But his Axis website profile – he is an AxisUK team pilot and flies a Mercury – reveals that for the last two years he has come sixth out of 800 pilots in the French cross country league and last year he made ten 100 km+ flights, including a 130 km flat triangle, a 126 km FAI triangle, and a 180 km out-and-return.

We do the interview by email, fitting perhaps for this fulltime IT systems administrator. He lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland, and names France’s Chamonix and Annecy as his local sites. “I can leave work at midday and take off from Annecy at 1.30 pm.” It is not unknown for him to take a half-day holiday and “fly 100 km after lunch!”

Read the full article in Cross Country 124

X-Alps Fever, Cross Country magazine
July/August 2009

Red Bull, blister packs and a will of iron – all you need for the toughest flying race in the world...

Read more at www.xcmag.com

And for the record, here are some interviews from an article I did last year. The feature went in the magazine, but there was so much good stuff we posted the Q&As online.

World Hang Gliding Championships

2009-07-14T16:59:00.005Z

June and July 2009

June and July. First to Andalucia for a week-long work trip, then to France for the World Hang Gliding Championships where I ran the competition blog. Amazing how it has developed in even a year. From last year's pre-World competition where there were maybe five blogging pilots to this year, where every team was fully online and lots of the pilots were too. Words, photos and pictures non-stop for two weeks. Twitter on.

Interview with a World Champion:

Paramotor Magazine: From here to Timbuktu

2009-06-18T22:40:00.007Z

Paramotor Magazine

May/June 2009

The Skycar, the world’s first flying car, set off on the ultimate test flight in January, to fly and drive from London, UK across the Sahara Desert to Timbuktu in Mali. Ed Ewing reveals the highs and lows of one of the most unusual PPG adventures ever.

Read the full feature in this month's magazine, issue 13, either in print or digitally

Financial Times: Shooting the breeze

2009-05-13T13:07:00.008Z

Financial Times, How to Spend it magazine
May 8 2009

Long-distance gliding above the Alps with a world record holder as your guide is out of this world. Words and photograph by Ed Ewing

I’M SHATTERED. The calm of the landing field compared to the speed, g-forces and turbulence of big-distance Alpine gliding feels suddenly disorientating, as if I am in shock.

Our final glide brought us in low over the aerodrome, before Klaus Ohlmann dropped a wing, banked steeply and carved a 225kph turn out of the sky. We landed perfectly at 120kph and rolled along the grass airstrip to the hangar.

Ohlmann popped the canopy, jumped out and headed straight off to fly again, and has left me alone to gather my last shred of dignity. I am determined not to kiss the ground.

"How long did you fly?" asks a German pilot nursing a large beer in the afternoon sunshine outside the clubhouse.
"About five hours," I reply.
"Ah, just a short flight… Usually he goes for six to eight."

Ohlmann is one of the best glider pilots in the world. Originally from Germany, he now lives in the southern French Alps near his gliding club, Quo Vadis, which has its own airfield at the hamlet of Serres, 100km south of Grenoble. It is tucked along the edge of a patchwork valley and surrounded by forested limestone escarpments.

Ohlmann has been gliding since 1973, aged 21. He won his first junior prize in distance flying two years later and was German champion "quite often" in the late 1970s. In 1984, he became European champion and turned professional. He currently holds 14 out of a possible 21 world records (the late Steve Fossett still holds a handful of the others), the longest being a 15-hour, 3,009km flight in the Andes, which is where he spends his winters.

A dentist by training, he has long loved gliding. In 1984 he led his first "guided flight" tours of the southern Alps. "I realised there were a lot of people flying here," he explained, "but they didn’t know how to fly big routes – for example, from the Mediterranean to Mont Blanc."

His role as a guide is straightforward: he flies, others follow. In this way he shows pilots how to fly long distances through big mountains at speed.
Louis Piller, a retired architect from Switzerland and glider pilot for 34 years, has known Ohlmann for more than 20 years: "I always learn a lot with him. He has such a great depth of experience."

Ohlmann flies a twin-seater. He takes paying passengers with no experience, not so much for joyrides as for learning experiences. I am here for that. You sit side by side in the cockpit, there is a stick in front of you, and when Ohlmann moves the pedals, your own feet move in tandem.

When he touches the stick forward and you accelerate to a steady gliding speed of 170kph you feel the pressure change. When you fly up the side of a cumulus cloud at 3,500m he helps with the oxygen, saying kindly, "You’re not acclimatised. This will make you feel better." If you are sick, he passes you a plastic bag. And when you’re feeling better and struggling for every inch of height below dark cliffs deep in the heart of the glaciated Ecrins massif, four hours into your flight, he smiles and takes your photograph.

My day had started at 10am in the briefing room. There were 16 people, three were women, most were German or Swiss. The average age was about 45. On a screen, Ohlmann led us through a dozen meteorological websites to build up a forecast for the day. "I am always positive!" he grinned, as he predicted 4,000m cloudbase around Mont Blanc. Outside in the sunshine, gliders were lined up like expensive Matchbox toys. Top-of-the-range models can cost up to £300,000.

By noon, we were in the hangar and I was being shown my emergency parachute by club instructor Robin Dautremer, who explained that Ohlmann’s glider is motorised. It has a small retractable propeller, which is used to take off, and means the glider can, if necessary, be flown like a normal plane for up to three hours. It’s handy if, like Ohlmann has done, you glide down the Andes, cross the Magellan Straits, land in Tierra del Fuego and want to get back to the top of Argentina the next day.

I imagined we would motor to several thousand feet but, instead, we connected with a scrappy thermal just above the aerodrome, the motor was switched off and we started the gliding proper. First, with the ground spinning below our right wing tip, we turned in tight 360s to get higher and into the better part of the thermal.

Then we glided to a hillside to soar in rising air before we found a good thermal, and climbed at 200m a minute to the base of the clouds. There, Piller joined us and we set off, flying in single file 50m apart.

In five hours, we covered 600km and a good chunk of the western Alps, flying first to Grenoble, then ChambÈry. We turned back before Mont Blanc because of storms, and flew south into the Ecrins, some of the wildest terrain in the Alps. We got low here, in the big mountains, and struggled to find lift, turning sharply, jolting the glider around, above rock spires and glaciated gullies, before we connected with a thump with a thermal rocket that took us soaring over the ski resort of Les Deux Alpes and – at last – on to the smooth summit cliffs of La Meije, a 3,983m mountain.

Leaving the high mountains, we headed further south, and toured a chunk of Provence before making for home. Even then it wasn’t over. We caught a "wave" of smoothly rising air just above Serres. It was a surprise even to this expert wave pilot. A founder of the international Mountain Wave Project, Ohlmann brings scientists and military personnel alike to collaborate on incredible high-altitude schemes, such as soaring the Tibetan side of Everest or, his next big plan, a carbon-free flight around the world.

"The thing with gliding is you never, ever stop learning," he said, before touching the stick and diving like a swallow through the air. The glider behind us fell away and, for a second, we were weightless above the earth.

Klaus grinned and dropped a wing tip. We spiralled in.

Cross Country: Debu´s World

2009-04-20T13:03:00.008Z

Cross Country
March 2009

An interview with Debu Choudhury in issue 122 of Cross Country magazine

“I’M FULLY CLOUD PARANOID,” says Debu Choudhury, one of India’s best paraglider pilots. “I got sucked up in quite a small cloud. I put big ears on, but it just got stronger and more turbulent. I got disoriented and knew I had to get down.” He started to spiral, big ears still in. “Down and down and down,” he says. “And then I saw the cloud getting darker and thought, ‘shit, it’s the mountain’. And it was too late.”

I meet Debu in the Friends Café in Bir, India. It’s a small place, just some outside space and a few tables. A team of helpers, a couple only children, work 12-hour days keeping pilots fed and watered in season. Debu, 29, rolls himself a cigarette and we talk about his flying career as the last few pilots of the day fly in from the launch at Billing 1,000 m above. It has been an atypical day – wind and cloud stopped play for many, while others raced gust fronts back from Dharamsala after topping out at 3,800 m. It is two days after the Himalayan pre-World Cup, which Debu helped organise.

“I learned to fly in Manali in 1994,” he says...

Read more by subscribing at www.xcmag.com

African Air: George Steinmetz

2009-02-28T00:53:00.004Z

Paramotor magazine

February 2009

A profile of National Geographic photographer George Steinmetz who has been photographing Africa from the air since 1997

IT'S ENOUGH TO MAKE anyone who has struggled to take a picture in flight green with envy. Open the pages of National Geographic photographer George Steinmetz’s new book, African Air, and the first image you see is a pretty awesome boot shot. His legs, vario and GPS all dangle a mile above a spectacular desert landscape. Wow! you think, he must be having the time of his life.

But not really. “I can see the fear in my trembling hands as I try to change lenses,” he writes in the essay, Terror at 7,500 feet, which accompanies the photograph. “This is far higher than I ever wanted to go in my paraglider.”

Steinmetz, 51, was a photographer long before he was a pilot, and he is still a “photographer who flies”, he explains from his home in New Jersey, USA.

“I don’t fly without a camera,” he says. “I got into this as a photographer.” For him, powered paragliding is not about the thrill or the discipline, it’s about the perspective. A regular photographer for National Geographic magazine since 1987, he talked them into giving him a commission to photograph the Sahara from the air a decade later in 1997.

He had first travelled through the continent as a 21-year-old, in 1979, and had lost his heart to it. He kept going back, to document the remarkable places he was seeing and people he was meeting. It was on these trips that he first thought about photographing Africa from the air...

Subscribe online to read the full article

GuardianTravel interactive: Brazil's best carnival

2009-02-27T14:40:00.007Z

Guardian Travel
February 24 2009
Olinda's carnival has all the party without the price tag of Rio or Salvador.
Click here to watch

Cross Country: Dragon slaying

2009-01-31T13:40:00.003Z

Cross Country magazine
January 2009

An interview with Nevil Hulett following a world record flight

WHEN NEWS CAME THROUGH that South African pilot Nevil Hulett had flown 502.6km to bag two (still to be ratified) world records on Sunday December 14 2008 the paragliding world blinked and blinked again. Not only a broken world record, but a smashed one – and an incredibly fast one.

Hulett’s quickest 100 km leg took barely 90 minutes and he was only in the air for seven-and-a-half hours – at an average speed of 65 kph. In comparison, the current record, set by Brazilians Frank Brown, Rafael Saladini and Marcelo Prieto, from Quixada in November 2007, is 461.6 km and was notable for its early launch and long day. They flew from 7.20am to 5.30pm – at an average speed of 46 kph.

What’s more, Hulett launched and flew alone in conditions he knows were dangerous – at one point he suffered multiple blowouts and cascades in rotor while low going backwards at 50 kph. “I could have died there,” he told Cross Country. We tracked him down and shook him until he told us his story…

Subscribe online to read the full story at www.xcmag.com

Cross Country: Feel the force

2009-01-31T13:36:00.006Z

Cross Country magazine

January 2009

An interview with the acrobatic world champion

DO acro-stars fall fully formed from the sky or must they be nurtured from birth? In the case of Horacio Llorens it was surely both. A cousin of the famous acro stars the Rodriguez brothers he lives in Albacete, Spain. He was taught to fly by the Rodriguez brothers’ father, “Uncle Felix”, aged 15 and last year he managed the triple whammy, winning the Acro World Cup in both individual and sycnro disciplines, and finishing first in the FAI ranking. A ranking which, he reminds us, “takes the best results of the last three years of each competitor”.
So how did he get here?

Read more: subscribe online at www.xcmag.com

GuardianTravel: Che's last stand

2009-01-05T17:41:00.007Z

Guardian.co.uk
31 December 2008

Fifty years ago, Che Guevara won the final battle of the Cuban revolution in Santa Clara. Today, the town is a shrine to the world's most iconic rebel

WE ARRIVED IN SANTA CLARA at midnight by train, and walked along cobbled streets through dark alleys and across more train tracks to get to the main square. Our destination was its only hotel, a dreary-looking 168-room concrete tower block on one corner of the colonial plaza, the Hotel Santa Clara Libre.

It was too late to go looking for one of the many fabled casas particulares – private rooms in turn-of-the-century homes with high ceilings, lazy fans and big windows – so a small box room on the seventh floor of a bog-standard 1960s hotel would have to do.

Some 270km east of Havana, in the centre of the island, the university town of Santa Clara is most famous as the site of an historic battle, the last of the Cuban revolution, and the one that clinched it for Fidel Castro and saw General Batista flee Cuba. But it wasn't Fidel who fought it – instead it was Ernesto "Che" Guevara who, between 28-31 December 1958, led a ragtag band of guerrilla fighters who derailed a train full of US-backed government troops on its way from Havana. The first of the two-part movie Che, released on Friday and starring Benicio Del Toro, is based on this event and has already been well received in Cuba.

That Che won the battle of Santa Clara and became a revolutionary figurehead is well known. Spend a minute in Santa Clara and you will spot his image painted on a wall somewhere. Spend an evening at one of the bar tables in town and you'll meet someone who swears they were there, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the man himself. They'll even have the toothy grin and missing "trigger finger" to prove it. He is revered here, as he is across Cuba, and his story is magnificently told, over and over again.

Santa Clara is a pretty, liveable town and it revels in its history. A short walk from Parque Vidal are the train tracks where the battle took place. Alongside is the actual bulldozer used in the attack and the box carriages that tumbled from the rails 50 years ago.

They are parked permanently on cement plinths, on a grassy patch next to the road, carriages skewed at angles, as if frozen in time when they crashed. A bar alongside, El Crucero (The Crossing), with a cartoon of Che as a steam engine painted on its outside wall, seems to be a wry dig at the pomp of it all.

It is a mile from the centre of the town, however, where the Che legend has its epicentre. This is the Che museum and mausoleum - Museo Historico de la Revolucion and the Mausoleo Che Guevara. Killed in La Higuera, Bolivia, in 1967 and then lost for decades in an unmarked grave, Che's remains were found in Vallegrande in southern Bolivia in 1995 and only made their way to Cuba in 1997. He is buried in the mausoleum below an enormous bronze statue of himself stretching high into the sky, in front of a parade ground of Stalinist scale.

To reach the museum, you have to walk through the sapping heat and past ranks of Soviet-style concrete housing. The term "cult of personality" seems to be have been invented for this place. The statue of Che is visible from every approach, his chin thrust boldly forward, his military fatigues and rifle identifiable from afar. It looks slightly absurd - out of proportion with the small, dusty streets that surround it - yet it guards an excellent museum directly beneath it, and a mausoleum, cool and calm and protected from the outside glare.

Inside the museum are simple exhibits: bowls, medical certificates, a battered water bottle and a gun. And black-and-white photographs: Che in his uniform at the UN smoking a Cuban cigar; Che eating; playing golf; as a child; climbing Mexico's Popocatépetl at a distorted angle.

It is one large room but split neatly into two parts. Che's early life of study and medicine is there when you come in; and then halfway through you reach his pistol – the start of his revolutionary life. A qualified medical doctor, he chose to carry bullets over medical dressings in the heat of battle, and thus was born Che, the revolution's number one icon.

Cuba is a difficult place to believe anything – the longer you stay the deeper this feeling becomes – and despite the seriousness, the elegance of it all, it is impossible to know if what you are looking at really is his water bottle, his bowl, his binoculars, or if they are simply props on an artful stage. There is no room for dissent in the official Che story, and this thought niggles away at the visitor. Wouldn't it be nice, you start to think, if there was some objective historical rigour involved in this fine museum.

The mausoleum next door is small, and illuminated mainly by the light of an eternal flame, lit by Fidel Castro in October 1997. There are 38 stars at stepped intervals on the wall, one for each revolutionary who died in Bolivia. Sixteen are buried here, along with Che.

The dim light creates a tranquillity – the place is only comfortably big enough for a handful of people at a time and it is never full. Names of the dead are set in the stars which in turn are set in a brick wall, as if the revolution is made up piece by piece. Che's star is at the centre, no bigger than the rest. Again, it is a simple place, and all the more powerful for it – a contrast to the giant statue and parade ground above you.

You leave the way you entered, and pick up your bag, wallet, phone and belongings from the attendants' office outside the entrance – nothing is allowed in, including cameras. The walk back is hot and sweaty, although shade is provided by occasional plane trees. Old American cars rumble past, buses honk, and horses and carts, a common form of transport in this oil-strapped country, clatter along. For a peso – 4p – they will take you back to the main square. But the walk through Santa Clara-the-present is worthwhile, if only because it leaves you wondering where the last 50 years have gone.

• Mausoleo Ernesto Che Guevara, Avenida de los Desfiles, Santa Clara. Admission free: 8am-9pm, Tues-Sat; 8am-6pm Sun. Santa Clara is four hours from Havana. Che is released on 2 January 20 February.

GuardianMoney: Ten of the best ... ways to cut the cost of Christmas

2008-12-23T17:12:00.004Z

Guardian.co.uk
December 8 2008

You don't need to break the bank to have a good Christmas. Laura Howard and Ed Ewing have some money saving tips

The financial hangover left by Christmas is all too familiar, but for many busting the budget this year could have more serious implications. With rising unemployment, restricted credit and a stagnating housing market 2009 looks set to be a financially chilly year. So if you need to cut your spending over Christmas without going lightweight on the fun, here is how ...

GuardianMoney: Christmas bargains take a pounding

2008-12-23T17:09:00.001Z

Guardian.co.uk
November 25 2008

Last December you could have saved a fortune shopping in America and Europe - now the exchange rate makes that very difficult, says Ed Ewing

"Why on Earth would you go shopping in New York?" Charlotte, a 30-something finance professional is exactly the sort of person who you would expect to be off to New York for a bit of pre-Christmas retail therapy, credit crunch or not. "It's insensitive and the exchange rate is terrible," she says... Read more

GuardianTravel: Downstream in Bruce Parry's footsteps

2008-10-27T07:12:00.003Z

Guardian Travel
October 20 2008

You don't have to be an ex-marine and survival expert to get close to the Amazon. Ed Ewing slings up his hammock with the locals for a three-day boat ride down river

ON MY LEFT a woman in pink leggings, green top and yellow scarf reached up to hang her facecloth over a beam. It was 1.30pm, the whole boat had just finished eating and we were all swinging gently in our hammocks. I had a view of the jungle and the muddy brown water, while above was a blue sky dotted with cumulus clouds. This was the Amazon, and it was wonderful.

Bruce Parry spent nine months travelling along the world's longest river for his latest TV series. But you don't have to be an ex-marine and an expert in indigenous tribes to get close to the Amazon and her people. All you need is a hammock.

I bought mine at one of the many tin-shack stores selling them in Tabatinga, a border town in the far west of Amazonas, Brazil. Three countries meet here: Brazil, Peru and Colombia. To get there we'd flown from Bogota, two hours over the rainforest, to Leticia, the Colombian part of Tabatinga. A walk in sapping heat across the porous frontier brought us to the river. Here we found a boat, the Sagrado Coracao de Jesus, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, moored and waiting at the river's muddy edge.

Five of these three-deck passenger ferries – built like old-style Mississippi steamers – ply the upper section of the river, between Tabatinga and Manaus, the Brazilian Amazonian capital of over a million people. The downstream journey takes three nights and four days – it takes longer going upstream.

The boat was empty, and we were welcomed onboard by the captain's wife who was wielding a broom – the ship was scrubbed and swept five times a day when we got moving. We would be leaving the next day at 3pm, she told us. In the meantime we could stay on board.

That first night, swinging under the stars on deck was quiet. The highlight of the day had been choosing a hammock, and we had nothing to do but share beers with the deckhands and watch them play cards. But by lunchtime the next day, the boat was crowded with people and the card-players were hard at work, loading cargo for the journey to Manaus.

This is the beauty of travelling like this along the Amazon – the people. There are 150 hammocks on each deck, giving each person about three feet of swing space. There is a kitchen and dining room, where passengers eat in shifts – 10 minutes, 30 at a time, at one big table. Fellow travellers are locals, heading to market or using the big ferry to get close to a tributary, where they are picked up by motor canoe, performing audacious mid-river transfers from ferry to river-taxi at full speed before waving and disappearing across the water to some unknown place. You can't see the other side.

This is a long, long way from anywhere. The overpowering feeling is one of space. Vast, undiluted space. There is the river, a mile across, though it's hard to tell. Then there is the rainforest, which is always changing, sometimes so dense it looks black, other times flooded, with stark dead trees rising above the canopy. And there are the people. The Amazon river is one vast highway and people live and work along its entire length.

Above all this is the sky. A typical day would start perfect, then clouds would build and by 4pm they were set to storm. On day one the rain fell in torrents. Those who knew what to do rolled down blue plastic side-sheeting and then we sat on our hammocks and listened as the rain battered down. Later, storm clouds hung ragged and spent against a yellow sunset, and then it was night. The moon rose. Later, we passed through clouds of flying bugs, which launched themselves at the lights and fell buzzing into T-shirts and hair. The day before we'd drifted through a cloud of blue butterflies.

After three days of this restful travelling, we reached Manaus. Along the way we'd seen river dolphins and giant catfish, been waylaid at muddy ports by fruit sellers and fiestas and it felt like we'd never get any closer. We saw the glow of it first, hours before we got there – a perfect dome of orange light stretched above a dark canopy of trees. We arrived at 10pm and in the hustle of docking only managed to say fleeting goodbyes to new friends – perhaps as it should be. Manaus by night was charmless compared to the river, and we stayed onboard, choosing hammock over hotel. At dawn we were woken by the metal clang of a big-city port at work. We stepped ashore and found a breakfast of sorts. Then the game of getting out of there began.

Getting there

Boats ply the Amazon all year round. Tickets can be bought locally from the ferry and usually include three meals a day. The journey described cost 150 Brazil reais (£41)

Guardian Travel: A Highland chief's top 10 walks

2008-10-27T07:07:00.002Z

Guardian Travel
October 7 2008

Highland clan chief Diarmid MacAulay walks us through his favourite landscapes in Scotland

1. Quinag, Sutherland

This remote, ice-scoured peak overlooks Diarmid's home in Assynt. For walkers, the steep cliffs and spineback ridge prove spectacular (if relatively easy) sport. The fact that the car park is already at 250m helps with the romp up the grassy lower slopes to the 808m summit. "From the top, you look across a very ancient landscape," says Diarmid. "It's 3.5 billion years old and fascinating geologically." The name of the mountain means "milking stool" in Gaelic, he says, while the corrie's name translates as "byre". "The name of the lower slopes, Airigh na Beinne, means 'summer grazing'." The whole mountain was once a pasture for "Scottish transhumance", he explains. "Until the people were cleared from the land, of course."

Read more...

Cross Country: The X-Alps: Blood, sweat and fear

2008-09-17T21:09:00.014Z

Cross Country September 2008

By the light of a headtorch Ulric Jessop ladled his dinner onto a plate. He’d used half a kilo of pasta, a block of cheese, a pot of cream and a slab of bacon and only looked up when he’d finished eating the lot. He scraped his finger around the side of the aluminium cooking pot and licked the cheese sauce off it. “I did 40km today,” he said, sounding like he couldn’t quite believe it himself.

It was June 2007, the month before the X-Alps, and Ulric was in full training mode. He was using the Ozone Chabre Open in France as a training week, setting off each morning to run from the campsite to the top of Chabre – 800m of ascent and 5 km away – with a full-size glider and harness. His knees were bandaged with supports and he adopted a sort of loping stride, using two ski poles while plugged permanently into an MP3 player listening to club music. Each day he left the campsite as pilots climbed into minibuses for the drive to the top. He would reach the summit, at 1352m, in time for the task briefing about two hours later.

One day in the middle of the comp, as 120 pilots stood around at launch waiting for the wind to drop, he arrived up the track, still running and still plugged into his music, to a spontaneous round of applause from the entire field. He smiled his appreciation, looked a little embarrassed and carried on climbing to the summit. From there, because it wasn’t flyable, he carried on along the ridge, completing a 40km mountain run before getting back to his tent for dusk.

For Ulric, who has competed in the PWC, bivvi-flown in the Himalaya, climbed new routes on 8,000m peaks and been flying and climbing his entire adult life, the X-Alps was, “the perfect combination of all the things I have been doing over the past 25 years”.

The X-Alps. It’s rightly called the toughest paragliding race in the world. Some argue it’s the toughest adventure race, full stop.

The route is straightforward: 838 km from Austria in the east to Monaco in the west, hiking and flying for two weeks along the spine of the entire Alps. In 2007 the race started at the Krippenstein and had five turnpoints: the 2,995m Dachstein in Austria, Marmolada in Italy, the Eiger in Switzerland, Mont Blanc (at 4,807m the highest mountain in the Alps), and finally Mont Gros, a hill above Monaco. Thirty athletes took part. Five completed the course, and Swiss pilot Alex Hofer won it for the second time.

The rules are simple. Athletes must be on foot or paragliding. They can’t catch lifts, take cable cars or hop on a train. They must carry their flying gear when they are walking and they must not fly at night or through airspace. Apart from that, it’s pretty much up to them how much sleep they get.

And although a quick calculation makes you think competitors “only” have to cover 60 km a day, the brutal truth is it’s nearly double that. Statistics from last year’s Red Bull X-Alps show that the winner, Alex, travelled 1,488 km in 13 days. That’s 114 km a day on average. He walked 40% of it and flew the rest.

And while second-placed Tomo Coconea covered slightly less ground at 1,350 km, he did most of it on foot. He hiked a superhuman 1,020 km (76% of the course), most of it at a run. And he didn’t slow down – towards the end of the race he stopped sleeping and ran 170 km in one 30-hour period.

Tomo is from Petrosani, Romania. A flying instructor he trains by running up one of his local mountains with his glider on his back. He even bets incredulous tourists he can beat the cablecar, and of course he does. Before the X-Alps he spent three weeks driving through the Alps investigating the route, something any serious competitor is advised to do. During the competition he slept three hours a night and would run in bursts then walk. When it rained he changed his shoes every hour to stop blisters. His supporter, Razvan Levarda, would then dry his trainers using the car’s heating system switched to full blast.

He almost won the 2007 event, but was overtaken at the end by Alex, who pulled a 100 km flight out of the bag and landed 13 km short of the finish. Alex ran the last three hours and got to goal five hours ahead of the Romanian Running Man. The next day Alex splashed down in the Med to take the title for the second time.

To those who followed the race via the online tracking, it was gripping stuff. But for the competitors, it was often hell.

Get fit

“Most of the competitors are pilots first and athletes second,” says Aiden Toase, a British pilot who has competed in two X-Alps, and came sixth last year. “Tomo’s performance demonstrated what you can achieve if you put athleticism first. Covering 140 km in 24 hours and coming second overall was down to his physical training.”

There is “no rule book” on how to train for the X-Alps says Aiden. “There’s no other event like it.”

He adds: “It depends on your own strengths and weaknesses. Everyone will benefit from putting in a huge amount of physical training but that’s unlikely to win you the race alone. You need to be completely comfortable flying alone over unknown terrain and making your own safety decisions.”

This is where Swiss pilots like Hofer and Martin Muller, who last year actually reached Mont Gros first but had to wait out a 36-hour time penalty for infringing airspace earlier in the competition, have the advantage.

“I have been flying in the Alps for thousands of kilometres every year for around 10 years,” says Alex, “mostly alone on unknown routes.”

He adds, “Of course, I must do some running and hiking training before each X-Alps, otherwise it would be too hard, really no pleasure.” He makes it sound easy. It’s not.

“From a physical perspective this is probably the toughest competition around,” says Aiden, who competes in other adventure races regularly. “I can think of no other event that has non-stop running for such a long period of time over such hard terrain.”

He adds, “But training to be super fit is only half the battle. You need to train to be tough so you can keep going and avoid injuries.”

How you do that is up to you. Simon Copi from Slovenia (who completed 487 km of the 838 km route in the 2007 X-Alps) said he trained as if he was going on a Himalayan expedition. Honza Rejmanek (USA, 696 km) says he, “hiked over 45,000m in vertical altitude carrying a 20kg to 30kg pack over three months as part of a field project on a volcano in Chile.”

Lloyd Penicuik (Australia, 555 km) said he contacted a friend, one of the world’s top adventure racers, who put him on a regime of flat road running before training on steep hills with a pack on. “Towards the last few months I started doing regular treks to get used to carrying a pack for long hours.”

Kari Castle, one of only two women to have competed in the X-Alps, says she was massively unprepared. “I finished the [2005] race,” she says. “I mean, I didn’t give up. I struggled not to give up every single day.” She had knee surgery two months before the event and only took part after being invited to by the organisers. She trained by bike riding, going to the gym and hiking to launch.

“What should I have done?” she asks. “I needed to train on pavement since so much of the walking was on paved roads. I had this wonderful fantasy of hiking on these beautiful Alpine trails up to the most perfect launch with wind dummies flying around… Ha! Time to wake up.”

The head game

As much as being physically tough it’s also a head game. “Eternal optimism and the drive to find a way to overcome is an enormous help,” says Aiden. Towards the end of last year’s race Aiden pulled a muscle. It meant it was painful to walk. He imagined his legs were “indestructible machines fuelled by Swiss chocolate,” he says. “It seemed to work.”

Two-time winner Alex Hofer was literally shitting himself with fear the first time he did the X-Alps. His lowest point came on day two: “I had terrible diarrhoea due to nervousness. I had no power at all and the way to Monaco did not seem doable. I wanted to find a place to lie down and sleep but my supporter wouldn’t let me.” Other pilots flew over him. “I fell into a creek and everything was just fucked.”

Now, he says, “I have more experience and I am well prepared to keep going, even when falling far behind on the last day.” It’s not only coming from behind that Hofer is mentally prepared for. “I have experience in winning competitions,” he says. “It does not make me nervous to be fighting for first place.”

Decision making, as ever, is the other unquantifiable element.

“Making decisions whether to walk up a mountain to fly was probably the hardest judgement to make,” says Lloyd Penicuik. “When to take off is another big one. Decisions we normally take for granted when free flying or flying in comps aren’t as straightforward when in a race like the X-Alps.

“You are constantly weighing up all the consequences. How much energy will it take to walk up? How much ground could I cover if I just kept on running?”

Kari Castle says the same. “I kept questioning myself. Should I go up and take a look? Then I’d think, I’m really tired, I’m not sure I could handle walking down from there if it didn’t work. What happens if it looks good to launch but I can’t see into the valley to make sure there is a good landing zone?”

And then there is your gear. “For the next X-Alps,” says Simon Copi without irony, “I would like to have a light paraglider.” His SupAir lightweight harness was a boost, but next time he wants to ditch that extra couple of kilos. The gear spends a lot of time being carried, so it is important to keep the weight down.

If it comes down to money, as it did with Lloyd, it’s a case of beg or borrow. “I was funding it myself so I had little choice but to scrounge what I could,” he says.

Other pilots are luckier. Ozone supported four pilots, including Ulric and Aiden, with a lightweight version of their Mantra M2 for the 2007 X-Alps. Still others are luckier still: “Living in China I’m quite far away from the scene,” says Alex Hofer. “I seriously don’t know much about today’s equipment. I just trust my friends at UP who make the right choice for me every time.” A case of turn up and fly. Or run.

Gear is important, pilots agree, but it’s more important that you know how it works and you trust it than you have the latest gizmos.

“There isn’t any gear I would or wouldn’t take,” says Lloyd. “I took minimal equipment. Next time I will make sure my gear is tested and harness and glider characteristics match each other and my style.”

Simon Copi says the most important gear is “cooker, internet connection, clear head and no blisters.” Lloyd’s list of essentials is even shorter: “socks made from the right material are important.”

Kari would second that. “Day one I wore these huge hiking boots because of the glacier launch. Big mistake! I remember looking around at the other competitors and seeing them all in runners. I knew I’d messed up. Three hours later I had the most intense blisters on the bottom of my feet that only got worse each day. I’ve never experienced so much pain in my feet before. I endorse sandals for sure. I wore them for the last three days of the race and wished I’d worn them earlier. Turns out the second place finisher that year wore sandals the whole way.”

Your other half

And then, there is your partner. “A pilot must do the flying and walking,” says Alex. “The perfect supporter is the one who takes care of all the rest.”

For him, that was Heinz Haunschild in 2005 and Sandro Schnegg in 2007. “Both were very great supporters,” says Hofer, “otherwise I would surely not have been able to win.” Next year Elisabeth Rauchenberger will take the role. “I think she will be the perfect supporter.”

“For athletes not familiar with the Alps your supporter is half your battle,” says Lloyd. “My supporter was a friend and someone I flew socially with. Unfortunately we haven’t spoken since the race.”

Lloyd does not care to go into details – instead saying positively “his route planning was pretty good” – but it tainted his race. “It’s critical that supporters know they are part of the race,” he says. “Basically they are going to be your slave for the whole race, you can’t just run off to the supermarket for your own supplies. They are your lifeline, your cook, your driver, your motivator. I can’t express enough the importance of the supporter.”

He adds, “Your supporter needs to stay positive at all times and not take anything personally.”

However, says Aiden Toase, “it’s not quite as simple as choosing your supporter. It’s probably more the other way around. It can be really difficult to find someone.” He points out they have to give up their summer holidays for no money and little thanks. “It’s a huge ask. The most important thing is that you can get on with your supporter and remain conscious of the fact that they have given up a lot to support you.”

Tomo’s supporter says he got less sleep than the Running Man. “There is so much to prepare before he goes to bed and before he wakes,” he told a reporter last year. “When he’s running, he doesn’t like to carry too much so every 30 minutes I have to run alongside him as he is moving and fill up his water bottle. Then I have to get on the road and make sure he goes the right direction."

And Ruth Jessop, Ulric’s wife and X-Alps supporter, says the role of supporter could be a “very lonely one”. Supporters, she says, spend a lot of the time walking, as well as driving. “The reality is that I would drive on ahead, check the route, then walk back to Ulric, walk with him to the car, then drive on again. It’s really tough both physically and emotionally.”

It got difficult towards the end. “Due to the bad weather we chose a different route, one that we hadn't driven before the comp, so I had to work really hard to find where the paths went, sometimes jogging them to check that they went through.”

Supporters also have to get the technology right. “Like constant weather forecasts, or charging phones, cameras, gps, laptops, batteries and head torches,” says Ruth. “Or having to do a 10-minute video diary.” Athletes belong to the Red Bull marketing department for the duration, and that means filing video, pictures and diary entries each day. It’s in the rules. “Ten minutes doesn't seem like much, but we always seemed to forget about it until the end of the day so most of our video dairies are of us falling asleep.”

The worst part of being a supporter, says Ruth, was “feeling helpless when Ulric took off and didn’t get a good flight and knowing there was absolutely nothing I could do about it … knowing that each time they land they are going to have to spend the rest of the day trudging endlessly along busy main roads.”

And then there’s the food. “When I wasn’t walking I was preparing food,” says Ruth. “Towards the end we were both so exhausted that Ulric didn’t want to eat much and kept going on gels and energy bars. That made me feel like I had failed him.” She didn’t of course – the pair finished eighth, at the 708 km mark.

The finish line

At 102 km from goal Aiden Toase finished last year’s race at 736 km. His “eternal optimism” meant he had carried on walking even after he hurt his leg and could only descend by walking backwards.
“I still had 400 km left, a terrible forecast with no chance of a significant flight and loads of competitors catching up on me while Tomo was 40 km ahead and running,” he remembers. But he wouldn’t quit. “For me it’s about overcoming the mountains and getting to Monaco.”

Kari Castle didn’t quit either, even though she was in “last place securely” when she competed. “The hardest part was the mental energy it took not to quit every single day,” she says. “I felt lost and out of my element. But something kept me going and I’m really glad I did. I knew quitting would feel even worse.”

On hearing that Alex had reached Monaco in 2005 Kari knew she only had to get through another 48 hours before the race officially ended. Her supporter, Craig, set up a finish line at the 200 km mark and met her with an ice-cold beer. “To sit and celebrate my own small victory and the winner’s victory was a dream – and an honour.”

For one man, it’s been more than a dream twice over. His flying skills combined with extreme fitness paid off – he landed 13 km from Mont Gros and only had to keep it together for the last few hours of the day. “My body was hurting but I was just so thankful to still be able to fight for victory after being so far back in the morning,” he remembers. “To run along the slopes of Monaco with no need to prevent blisters or sore muscles anymore, in nice weather with the blue sea and the smell of victory. That was awesome. That’s the best memory for me.”

****

Boxout: Crunch time

“I wish someone had told me not to eat that sandwich.” Honza Rejmanek picked up salami roll from the bottom of the cooler the day before the X-Alps. “I got terrible food poisoning,” he says. “The lowest point was in the first hour when the uphill started and I threw up all my liquids.”

Food is important. For winner Alex Hofer it’s at the top of the list. “The thing I want to avoid the most is to be hungry during the race,” he says. “Once I had to sleep at 2700m inside my glider in the rain – but at least I had some pasta with me. It would have been a bitch to be up there without food.”

Food is the supporter’s job, and they need to get it right if the one doing the running isn’t to collapse in a hypoglycaemic mess.

Ruth Jessop supported her husband Ulric during the 2007 competition. She spent a lot of time researching what foods worked on training walks and runs from their home in the Maritime Alps (pottyplace.com).

“The main thing is to eat a really good variety of nutritious food,” she says. “I think people assume you will be eating freeze-dried bivvy food, but given that most of the time you’re walking through towns you get quite a lot of opportunity to go to shops.”

She adds, “My theory was little and often with lots of variety and fresh ingredients wherever possible.” However, that wasn’t always possible. “I really struggled to find shops that sold what I wanted – you could get any shape of dried sausage but often no fresh vegetables or meat.”

Making food appetising was key. “I used a lot of herbs and spices to give food flavour,” she says. “Not just big plates of tasteless pasta or pot noodles.”

Anything not to eat? “Keep off things like cheese that don't give you anything, or fatty foods that make you feel low after you’ve eaten them,” she says. “Bread was another problem. A lot of it was really crusty so caused mouth problems. Trying to plan a snack every hour is pretty difficult when you take bread off the menu.”

Fruit caused mouth problems too, says Ruth. Sports dieticians say such issues are normal for endurance athletes.
Tongues become ulcerated and sore from drinking out of camelbacks and bottles, and from rough foods like muesli bars. Typically, after four days the athlete finds it hard to eat.

“By the end all I could really get him to have was Yop,” says Ruth. “I'm not sure which sends the biggest shiver down my spine even now, seeing a bottle of Yop or a can of Red Bull.”

There is no shortgage of that on the race. “Every second day the runners came round and gave us 24 cans of Red Bull, which means we drank about 100 cans of Red Bull each during the race. And as much as it pains me to say it, drinking Red Bull is a great way of staying awake.”

How much fluid athletes need depends on how hot it is and how much they sweat. “I always had bottles full of energy drink already mixed.” As well as the energy drink she kept water in the car. “I developed a fetish about water fountains,” she says. “I couldn't drive past one without stopping to fill up.”

In the end, the supporter’s role is to keep the fuel tank topped up. “However much you try, you can't stop them losing weight so however much you give them it isn't enough,” says Ruth. “The main thing is just to always have food at hand.”

Cross Country: Scott Barrett

2008-09-17T21:09:00.008Z

This is an interview I did with Scott Barrett in France - more on YouTube at youtube.com/Chabre2009

Cross Country
September 2008

When Scott Barrett stormed the first day of the pre-worlds at Laragne, France, this summer, it was a case of jaws hitting the floor. He went from 20 minutes behind the pack to overtaking it on top and eking out a 15:1 final glide diagonally across a valley to goal, arriving 20 minutes ahead of the pack which had been left trapped just out of reach of goal. It sounded preposterous. Here was this guy, in Europe for the first time, racing against some of the best pilots in Europe, including the world champion Attila Bertok and the French and British teams, and he’d won.

At the take off on Aspres, a south-facing hill with a large, perfect launch, all the talk had been about Attila. “It’s gotta be Attila!” said event director David Owen when asked who he had his money on to win the competition. Meet director Heather Mull was more circumspect, but had a similar answer: “The British pilots have flown here a lot, the French team is here and the current world champion is here.” Nobody mentioned the Australian.

But he was there all the time, flying an Airborne C4 that he’d designed, built and tested himself, and confident in his own abilities.

“It’s my first time in Europe and I’m having a blast,” he said later that evening. He was talking, in a fairly conservative way, about his flight that day. “I made goal. I made goal in the fastest time and I was first across the line. I had a really good day charging through the mountains.”

For the first day of a big comp he seemed to have been remarkably laid back. “There were a lot of guys racing before they needed to,” he said of the start. “I hung out with guys, spiralled down in the middle of the valley, took some photos of launch and the gaggles that were forming.” A smile spreads across his face as he remembers it. “Just taking it easy, relaxing.”

Most pilots took the first gate, but Scott held off. “I watched hordes head off on task. I started on the second clock, 20 minutes behind, and had the advantage of seeing where they were climbing well. I managed to link up three thermals to take me through to the second turnpoint.”

What was the second turnpoint? “Don’t know,” he says disarmingly, “I look at numbers on the GPS.” He adds: “People talk about all sorts of names and ridges but it’s just mountains and sun and wind to me.”

Scott is an engineer by training, and his brain seems to work in a fairly logical way. He admits as much, saying, “I have a great mind for it [competition flying].” He also, he says, has a “never ending self belief.” The results, “just follow”.

Those results – first at the Airborne Gulgong classic in 2007, third at the NSW state title in Manilla this year, and the first place at the pre-worlds – mean he is now ranked sixth in Australia and 21st in the world. He’s been flying since 1996 and competing since 2001.

Scott learned to fly in Bright, Australia, and now lives and flies in Newcastle, New South Wales, soaring the coast near his home. “My dogs love to fly with me at the beach,” he says. “We do a lot of dune soaring on training gliders which is a very good fun, and race topless gliders up and down the coast doing cross country runs.”

Each year, says Scott, the pilots fly with a new sea eagle chick, which breed nearby. “They learn to fly with us on the cliffs just up the road from my house,” he says. “We also have mountains close by, where we can do some cross country through the hills.”

Scott is 33, and works for Airborne as an aeronautical engineer on product development projects. “Design, test, break and fly things,” he says about his job description. It means he flies 400 hours a year and is around good pilots all the time. “Rick Duncan, Tony Barton and Attila Bertok all live close by,” he says.

One of the immediately striking things about Scott is his assuredness. It is not arrogance, cockiness or mumbling self-deprecation – common traits in many achievers. Instead, he is straightforward and thinks seriously about a question, before giving a clear, considered reply. This, it becomes clear, is what well-placed self-belief looks like.

“When my purpose is to learn, I just can’t lose,” he says. “I have no fear of failure and I always retain great confidence in what I do.” He is bold: “I feel that I’m only getting started in getting results in racing.”

The pre-worlds, he says, was about getting a result. He went there to win. Before heading to the competition he had three days flying triangles around Annecy, and then four days practice at Laragne. “I had a list of goals to achieve,” he says.

“I interviewed a number of very experienced pilots in the area, I took careful notes so I only had to ask once. I practiced likely final glides and learned where the thermals were.”

This paid off on his first day. When he went directly to the last thermal, which he’d discovered on a practice day, putting him on top of the gaggle, all the other pilots were hanging back trying to get height for the final glide, he knew the valley was often buoyant in the afternoon. It wasn’t a ballsy gamble, it was an informed final move which he took on his own.

“I used the gaggles but I can do it with or without them,” he says of the flying in Laragne. “I wasn’t afraid to do something different when it was a clear advantage.” On the whole, he says, “I was a lot tamer than I usually am”.

From the start of Scott’s competition career his motivation has been to learn to fly cross country. “I was amazed at the flights that the comp pilots were doing and the higher skill level,” he says. “Competition is the way to learn how it’s done.”

And although Scott has “neglected” the “big AAA competition circuit” this year (“we didn’t have nationals team selection”) he’s been flying in other ways. “This year I really enjoyed organising ‘Scott’s Mystery Mountain Tour,’” he says, “a wandering bivouac XC tour, with friends, flying through the Victorian Alps – we’d all like to do that again.”

Scott also enjoys working with other pilots, helping them learn. “I’m very aware that I’m living other people’s dreams and I’m quite happy for them to be a part of what I do,” he says.

“I quite enjoy working on pilot development and with new enthusiastic pilots. It helps to maintain perspective on the wonders of the flying that we do – it’s rewarding for me to see others enjoying their flying.”

But then so is winning competitions. After task 1 at the pre-worlds Scott came 14th in task two, and then won the third valid task by a mere three seconds and five points. Once might be lucky, twice is deliberate. It set pilots jumping at the competition and online.

"Why do I start off with Scott Barrett winning the day? Because it is news!” enthused Davis Straub on his Oz Report that morning. “It is news because it is against type, against expectations. It shakes up our view of the world. It isn't supposed to be happening, but it is. This is a guy who has never flown here and he's flying on a glider from the smaller and less celebrated of the two Australian hang gliding companies."

The next day it rained, the day after Scott flew the 99km task in two hours 56 minutes – arriving in goal a full 35 minutes after Attila Bertok, who had recovered from a cold earlier in the week to storm back on the final day. A start on the first gate meant Scott was 21st on the day, but he’d done enough to clinch the competition. No longer unknown, Scott Barrett will be watched closely when he heads back to Laragne for the World Championships next year.

GuardianMoney: Ten of the best … ways to cut the cost of driving

2008-09-17T21:09:00.002Z

Guardian.co.uk
September 17 2008

According to the RAC the cost of motoring is actually going down. "In real terms it is 18% cheaper to buy and run a car, including fuel costs, in 2008 than 1988," claimed a recent report from the motoring organisation.

That may be so, but said same report also admits some aspects of running a car are now much more expensive. Fuel, for example, has gone up by 200% in real terms over the past two decades.

The cost of owning and running a car is on average £5,627 a year, says the RAC. Half of that is depreciation, nearly £1,200 is fuel, and the rest is tax, interest payments, insurance, maintenance, and breakdown membership. So what can you do to reduce these costs?

1. Drive like a saint

Smoother driving leads to a big saving in fuel, and a big cash saving too. Over 10,000 miles you might save £500 by driving efficiently, according to a recent test done by the Driving Standards Agency.

If you pull away from traffic lights without revving, don't rev while idle, don't use fuel-hungry air-conditioning and don't sit there with the engine running you can cut fuel use by between 10% and a third, the AA claims.

And slow down - according to the Department for Transport, driving at 70mph uses up to 9% more fuel than driving at 60mph, and up to 15% more fuel than driving at 50mph. Read the whole article...

GuardianTravel: Sardinia without the sandslinging

2008-08-16T22:11:00.004Z

Not a yacht to be seen ... the tiny beach of Cala Morescu

Guardian.co.uk
August 16 2008

VICKY AND PAOLO are comparing sizes. "Bill Gates's is enormous," says Vicky, clearly impressed. Her partner Paolo, a commercial diver and marine archaeologist, and hence someone who knows a lot about the subject, is not impressed: "No," he protests, "it's not so big, it doesn't have a helideck." They are talking yachts. But, not just any yachts - billionaires' yachts. Yachts of the very, rich and the internationally famous.
Read the full article...

GuardianMoney: students

2008-08-16T22:03:00.003Z

Guardian.co.uk August 14/15

A-level results out this week...

Cross Country: Carl Wallbank

2008-07-30T16:26:00.002Z

Cross Country magazine
August 2008

FOR A HANG GLIDER pilot Carl Wallbank spends a lot of time working over water. His day job as a sub-sea engineer means he spends a fair amount of life on oil rigs in the North Sea. But Carl’s first love has always been the sky, not the ocean.

A hang glider pilot since 1991 and a competition pilot since 2000 he is now captain of the British team.

Now 36 he remembers the first time he saw a hang glider as a 21-year-old: “I watched one take off from a mountain in Wales in 1991,” he says. “I had never seen a hang glider before. Words can’t describe what I felt when I watched the pilot run off the mountain and soar like a bird.

“From that second I was hooked. I couldn’t think about anything else and had to do it. I bought a second-hand glider and was running up and down fields trying to learn how to steer within a week.

“The next weekend I went up a 250m hill. Once I calmed my nerves I ran and ran till my feet left the ground and I was flying.” He didn’t know how to control the glider properly or land, he says. “And there I was, hundreds of feet in the air just like a bird!”

He figured he would have about three minutes to learn how to fly, and how to land, before he would reach the ground. “Somehow I managed to land without incident,” he says now. “It was the most amazing feeling I had ever had. I was so excited that I carried the glider – fully rigged – back to the top of the mountain and did it again. But it took so long to carry up that it was nearly dark when I got there.”

That didn’t stop him though, and off he went again. “From that day on I was totally hooked.”

Flying had always been something Carl, who is from Liverpool, had wanted to do. “As a child,” he says, “I was always fascinated with planes and anything that was not connected to the ground.”

As a teenager that meant getting into the air in a slightly different way – he was one of the UK’s top BMX freestylers in the 1980s. “It was the nearest I got to flying,” he says looking back.

Carl still can’t quite believe what hang gliding feels like; the privilege of it. “Hang gliding is a feeling that very few humans have experienced,” he says. “It takes us out of our normal human life and turns us into this amazing birdlike man.

“It gives us an unbelievable freedom to do as we wish. We are free from the hustle of normal life. The problems in life, work and the world are gone as soon as our feet leave the ground.”

He continues: “Any issue in your mind is totally removed for the duration of the flight. You focus so hard with all your senses.

“Your vision, taste and smell work harder than ever as you try to feel your way through the sky looking for evidence of rising air. If you lose this focus – even a small lapse in concentration – you will soon be down close to the ground looking for a landing field.”

He is a little in awe of it: “I guess only people who have flown hang gliders before can fully understand the feeling,” he concludes.

Carl’s fascination with flying has been matched by a dedication that has seen him reach the highest level of his sport. He led the British team to win first place gold at the World Championships in Texas in 2007. It has left him with a unique sense of pride in the accomplishment.

“Being the captain of the British team for the first time and winning team-gold for my country in Texas takes some beating.”

But first place on the team podium hasn’t been his only achievement. He came eighth overall in the 2007 Worlds and sixth in the 2006 Europeans, when his team also won a podium place in third place.

The same year, 2006, he won the British series, while in 2002 he was a member of the British team that took third place bronze at the Europeans.

He also has a couple of unique personal bests in the UK. He holds the record for the longest flight in Wales and is the only hang glider pilot to fly coast to coast in Great Britain.

His most memorable flight was completed as part of the longest competition task ever set: 284km in Texas in 2007. A flight he describes with some understatement as “nice”.

Another flight, “was probably more memorable for the unlucky pilots who didn't make it that day,” he says.

“It was the last day at the Europeans in 2002 when the British team really needed to pull something out of the bag to get bronze. As a team we really got it together and with a team mate we flew wing tip to wing tip for three hours, diving in and out of these deep valleys in Slovenia, sometimes just popping up enough to look into Austria before falling down again,” he says, painting a remarkable picture.

“We picked our way slowly along the course watching many pilots land below, and managed to stay in the air long enough to get to goal.”

Carl, he says, flies because of the freedom. “I get the feeling that no one who doesn't fly will ever feel free. I’m free.”

He doesn’t “yet” hold any world records, although he has been chasing the British record for distance. “I will get it next,” he says confidently.

Newcomers to the sport often wonder if top pilots get scared, and yes, Carl admits that fear is a factor, but not while flying and not while thousands of feet in the air.

“I do get scared,” he says, “but only before I take off and after I've landed. I don't have time to get scared whilst flying. All my energies are focused on what I have to do to get myself out of or away from any danger. It’s only afterwards when I think about it that I get scared.”

But fear is not the main emotion in the sport. Elation is. And never more so than when he was flying at the World Championships in Brasil in 2003. “I was climbing through 10,000ft in a thermal with all my friends when a message came over the team radio: 'Carl congratulations, you have just become a dad to a little boy!!' Was I on top of the world, literally!”

If that was one of his best moments hang gliding, perhaps his worst was when he was being towed into the air by a winch at RAF Kemble. “I had a lockout [stall and veer off course] and came in very hard on my head causing me to have to have serious neck surgery in 2006.”

Hang gliding has its dangers he admits. “Like anything in this world, if you abuse it, it will hurt. So give it the respect it deserves and it will respect you.”

His respect for the air extends to its natural inhabitants. “Birds are the real master of the sky,” he says. “They are as interested in us as we are in them. They watch and follow us – it does get a little unnerving when they fly at us with the claws out though.”

Carl likes all types of flying. “Big mountains, flatlands, coastal stuff and even the beautiful rolling hills in England on a good summer’s day,” he says. “Anywhere there is rising air.”

He is looking forward to returning to Laragne, France, for the pre-Worlds and World Championships in 2009. “I've flown in Laragne quite a few times,” he says. “I love the place. It is quite technical so I still have a lot to learn here, but I always have hopes for a good result.” He injects a note of caution into his confidence: “I just need to believe in myself a little more ... we'll have to see.”

With Carl at the helm the UK team won gold at the World Championships in 2007. Will it do it again in 2009? “Never say never!” he says immediately. “Nobody thought we would do it in Texas and we did. We proved that you don't have to be the best in the world to win. Working well as a team does allow the unthinkable to happen.”

Carl trains by flying regularly. “It’s the only way to keep fit,” he says. “I find normal exercising isn't enough for the muscles you use in hang gliding.” And what about the head game? After all, the mental attitude to flying has to be right to win. “I'm still trying work that one out,” he jokes. “Seriously though, being happy and enjoying it helps.”

If he wasn’t flying Carl would be flying his ultra-light aircraft – he built it himself – or skiing. If not that he’s in the gym or working.

Looking forward he says his goals for hang gliding in general are “just to keep this sport alive and help others to experience this amazing thing.” To that end, he gives any prospective pilot this advice: “Join your local club, get a duel flight, get to school and get in the air.”

Collection Point: features

2008-07-21T12:23:00.005Z

July 2008
Collection Point magazine

Two features from this in-house transport magazine, produced by Cubic, the company behind London's Oyster card. Click on the link to reveal a fairly fancy pdf version of the magazine.

The perfect journey
"THERE'S A TRAIN in the Highlands that is timetabled to arrive at the port exactly one minute after the ferry has left." You can almost hear Stephen Joseph banging his head against a brick wall. It is, he says, a classic example of the "perverse incentives" that exist in the British transport system …

Transport perspectives: Stephen Joseph
An interview with Stephen Joseph OBE, executive director of Campaign for Better Transport

SW: Victoria Mather profile

2008-07-12T08:20:00.006Z

I was cleaning out my laptop and found this profile of journalist Victoria Mather I did when I was deputy-editor for London magazine SW four years ago. It made me laugh, as I'd forgotten I used to have quite a lot of fun at that job.

SW
August 2004

LUNCH WITH VICTORIA MATHER is fraught even before getting to the restaurant – the publicity woman instructed me firmly to, “mind your Ps and Qs”. I have an instant vision of dining with a name-dropping, fire-breathing dragon, ready to pounce as soon as a P is misplaced or a Q quite forgotten.

Victoria Mather was once part of a slated Channel 4 show called the Dinner Party Inspectors. The general consensus was that she came across as a terrible snob on a terrible show. She is also the writer-half of the duo that produces the hugely enjoyable Social Stereotypes column for the Daily Telegraph.

She writes with an eye-wateringly perceptive eye about retired colonels, distraught working mums, designer babies, Essex girls up town and pushy mothers. She has a new book out, the sixth collection of Stereotypes, called The Perfect Family.

I take the number 19 bus to Battersea Bridge, where we will be having lunch chez Ransome’s Dock. The 19 is an old fashioned Routemaster that you can jump on and off. It’s the stuff of Social Stereotype legend. I jump in.

“There are no potted shrimps about at the moment are there?” says Victoria. “I tried to get some for dinner on Tuesday night. I think it’s the storms. You know, they can’t send those Chinese illegal immigrants out into Morecambe Bay.”

Victoria seems as tough as a cockle-picker herself, in a very English way. She hasn’t always been travel editor of Tatler, royal correspondent for American TV, a regular on Radio 4’s Loose Ends and had a little black book stretching from AA Gill to Zara’s mum.

“I started out as a kitchen maid at the Berkeley, I cooked my way through university,” she says once the food-ordering is done.

“I’ve been a journalist for 25 years. I started as secretary to Mrs Betty Campbell of Jennifer’s Diary fame at Harpers & Queen who sacked me for having greasy hair.” Err…

“No she did. By that time I’d started writing features for the magazine. I had a wonderful,
wonderful woman who discovered a lot of us, called Anne Barr, she really nurtured us, including Nicholas Coleridge, now managing director of Condé Nast.

“I then went to the Morning Telegraph in Sheffield for six-and-a-half years as a cub reporter and I did all my journalism training there. And it was an interesting time: it was the time steel was declining, the miners’ strike and the Yorkshire Ripper. So we had consistently national running stories, we were very lucky.

“I’ll never forget. During the Yorkshire Ripper trial, the chief constable came in to talk to the women reporters about what to do if we were attacked by the Yorkshire Ripper. He said, ‘what you have to do ladies is get your keys out of your handbags and stuff them in his eyes’. So we all thought about that. Dead silence. Then my news editor, Eric, said, ‘Chief Constable, have you ever bloody known a woman who can find their keys in her handbag?’”

Born in the south Victoria was raised up north by five Yorkshire aunts and an uncle (her father was seriously injured in the war and her parents were often away for his treatment) and she does a mean Yorkshire accent, chuckling as she tells the story. “I have actually always carried them in my other pocket ever since.”

“Then I went from there to the Times. And in ’86 when Conrad Black bought the Telegraph I was one of the first five appointments by Max Hastings as film critic.

“Max specifically did not want anybody who knew anything about film. So I concealed the fact that I’d done film as a special subject at university and my father was a theatre director and cracked on into that. And I’ve been at the Telegraph ever since.”

She went freelance after five years – “I just couldn’t live the rest of my life entirely in the dark” – and became Arts editor at GQ magazine too. From there, where old friend Nicholas Coleridge was already empire-building, Victoria went to Tatler in 1992, “for two weeks as acting deputy editor. And I’ve been there ever since.”

It was while working as a film critic at the Telegaph that Victoria made one of her closest friends. Alexander Walker was the Evening Standard’s film critic for 40 years and died last year.

“He was a very great friend of mine. I was with him when he died,” she says swiftly. “It was in this tiny flat about the size of this table … and when you opened the oven a whole lot of Sotheby’s catalogues would fall out … when I opened his fridge it had several bottles of vintage Champagne and a banana in it. That was it. That’s the way to live.”

Mr Walker left much of his art to the British Museum, but Victoria inherited his photographic collection. She would like to launch her latest book in the musuem, in the Alexander Walker Collection. “This book is partly dedicated to him,” she says.

“He taught me about film, he taught me a great deal of very stringent journalism … and he taught me about art, modern art,” her voice softening. “Before I knew Alex I was very much hunting prints and portraits of ancestors and rather inconsequential watercolours. Alex introduced me to innovation and strong colour … he completely opened my eyes from being a very provincial art lover of unquestioning taste to new boundaries. He loved Stereotypes, he’d always ring up on a Saturday.” Later she adds, “it’s very odd, I still go and ring his telephone number”.

Victoria has lived in the same house in Battersea for 17 years, since marrying her husband who works in London and Moscow. She loves the area, and knows all the markets and shops around Northcote Road and up into Pimlico. She works from home and has built a, “really pretty potting shed” at the bottom her garden which she shares with broadband access and her Pekingese, Bubble. “I walk to work,” she says, “past the water feature”.

From there she juggles her many hats: Tatler travel editor which takes up much of her time; Royal Correspondent for US news channels CBS, ABC and NBC (sort of like the Jenny Bond of the States? “Yes.” Pause. “Sort of.”); and her Stereotypes column.

Victoria is the writer-half of the Stereotypes, the other half is illustrator Sue Macartney-Snape. Victoria, Sue and their editor have lunch three times a year and produce lists of ideas, Sue then draws them and Victoria writes to the drawing. The series was meant to run for a few months but has been going nine years. The secret is that “society changes”; when they started no one had mobile phones. The idea of the most recent fads – yoga retreats, Pilates instructors and lifestyle gurus fills Victoria with glee.

Social Stereotypes has been very successful. There have been over 550 columns and six books. They sell but not in bucketloads. She flies some 60-70 times a year (economy or budget airlines if it’s under four hours), and as an angsty traveller she has to be at the airport hours in advance. It means she spends a lot of time in airport bookshops. There she finds, “Not a sign of Stereotypes, just piles of bloody shoots and leaves!”

The success of Lyne Trusse’s book Eats, Shoots and Leaves is “infuriating” she says, as most writers will.

“She has sold 795,000. That is a lot. That book has made her a millionairess. I just got an Aga!’ She pauses, “A very smart Aga, in gloss black. It’s got four doors. And a gas hob.”

GuardianMoney: Cashing in on foreign currency

2008-07-06T17:53:00.002Z

Guardian.co.uk
Thursday July 3 2008

IT SHOULD BE simple. You want to change pounds into euros, dollars or rupees and you want to get the best rate. But in reality it's a financial minefield with a huge choice of options: cash, traveller's cheques, credit cards, debit cards and the new kid on the block, pre-paid currency cards.

So what's best way to get hold of foreign currency? "The cheapest way to spend abroad is on the 'right' debit or credit card," says Martin Lewis from MoneySavingExpert.com. This means one that doesn't hit you with charges each time you use the card or withdraw money from a hole in the wall. Read the whole article here...

Chabre2009: Blogging the world hang gliding championships

2008-06-26T20:33:00.004Z

I am in France for two weeks, blogging for the World Hang Gliding Championships - updating text, photos and video all day long. Now I know what that one-man band guy feels like. See it here.

Guardian Travel: The new stars of Provence

2008-06-26T20:28:00.003Z

Guardian.co.uk/travel
Thursday June 26, 2008

ASTRONOMER Olly Penrice is getting excited. "Don't look, don't look! In a minute you will see it and be much amazed." I am about to get my first up-close-and-personal look at the moon. I have been warned not to expect too much. Only a day earlier a neighbour of Olly's had been musing about "fuzzy blobs" in the sky. Read the whole article... or see the gallery.

GuardianMoney: credit crunch...

2008-06-04T20:38:00.003Z

A week on the Money desk at the Guardian ... it's depressing writing about the credit crunch when the weather outside looks like November. Welcome to the summer of 2008.

Cross Country: Close but no cigar!

2008-05-19T17:46:00.006Z

May 2008
published in Cross Country, the world's only international free-flight magazine.

FROM THE OTHER SIDE of the city the hills behind Santiago de Cuba stretch out in a line that goes for miles. They face south east, slope down to the plain below, and are dotted with radio masts.

This was my last chance as far as flying in Cuba was concerned. I had been to Havana’s unique city site – an 800m long, low dam facing the lake in the city’s Parque Lenin. Topped with a road you take off from the park beside it and groundhandle your way into the air to soar above the traffic.

I’d been keen to fly here since seeing pictures of it on ojovolador.com. But it wasn’t to be: in Havana three times while travelling in the country for six weeks, flying had been thwarted by “winter conditions” – cold fronts sweeping in from the north west. The tail end of freezing storms on the USA’s east coast they bring wind, grey skies and crashing waves to the city’s famous sea wall.

I’d also spent a couple of nights in an off-season holiday camp out at Playa Jibacoa, 60km east of Havana, kicking bleached turtle shells along the beach waiting for a chance to fly the 70m high limestone escarpments. It never came – the wind never stopped howling and I left disappointed. A return visit was even windier.

The weather in Cuba is split along the length of the island. In the north the wind blows in from the north east. In the south it comes in from the south east. Cross the country from north to south – the island is only 190km wide at its widest but 1250km long – and the boundary between the Atlantic air and warmer, softer Caribbean air is noticeable.

On a clear day the sky is a different colour of blue and you can see the line where the air masses meet. On a classic day, the seabreezes converge and a single line of cloud marches down the centre of the island. (A neat animated satellite photo illustration of this exists on the “sea breeze” Wikipedia page.)

The trick to flying here then it seemed, was to find a north-east or south-east facing hill free of trees, power lines and thorn bushes, launch, and head west. The sky looked good regularly, with streams of dotted cus at a couple of thousand metres.

But wherever I went I was thwarted. Out west, in the tobacco growing region of Vinales famous for its limestone karst scenery of rocky towers and cultivated valleys, it was impossible to find anything clear or high enough to launch from. This despite the area’s sheer walls – a “mini Yosemite” the guidebook calls it.

In the morning, with still air and radiation fog blanketing the fields, it was easy to think of it as a paramotorist’s dream. But paragliders? Difficult.

This was confirmed by a guide at the national park office, who said Yes, someone had flown here several years ago, but from that hill over there, and pointed to a gentle tree-lined bunny-hop style training field.

Down south, in the Escambray mountains, the pre-revolutionary hideout of Che Guevara and captivating backdrop to the colonial town of Trinidad, I stood on the lookout and gazed down at the Caribbean in the distance and 2,000ft below. Through the binoculars this had looked promising. But up close the “grassy patches” were simply waist-high thorns. The only place to lay out a glider was the concrete roof of the two-storey bar. The wingtips would drop over the side I mused, but … no.

Later we tried the hill above Trinidad itself, which is small and home to the town’s radio mast. Yes, said the man from Radio Cuba, two people flew here two years ago, but since then a pylon had been built on the only launch spot and cables strung across the hill. He offered me the roof of his shed and asked how much room I’d need – more than that I said.

So this was it. Santiago de Cuba, the country’s second city, is a 1,400km and three-day drive from Havana. To get there you take the Soviet-built main highway. A six-lane monster that runs out halfway down the island. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 the building simply stopped.

Hardly anyone has cars in Cuba so driving along it is like travelling in some weird post-oil world. People travel on bikes, horseback, in horse-drawn carts, piled into trucks or stand waiting for a lift. There are very few buses. We dodged cowboys, police bribes, 1957 Buicks, onion sellers and loping, lazy vultures. One didn’t make it, disappearing with a thud and a rattle under the wheels leaving feathers flying in our wake.

But the road gets you there – and finally the wind was on. It was perfect. But we were in the wrong spot – had driven too far and were being warned away from the radio masts by the army. “Parapente” said one, and pointed back the way we’d come. By the time we got to the site – one of Cuba’s best – the sun was setting.

We sat on take off in a warm wind and watched as night fell over the Caribbean, pollution from the smokestacks in the distant port streaking the orange sunset black.

The next day the wind blew hard from the northwest. Storm clouds towered over the hill early and an epic battle of Atlantic air meets Caribbean played itself out for the next five days. By which time we had driven east again, past Guantanamo Bay and its good-looking but politically-sensitive hills, past cactus-covered limestone ridges on the coast, and over the jungle-clad Sierra del Puril to Baracoa, the most easterly point in Cuba. Dreams of cruising a Cuban convergence line for an awesome distance lay like everything else, soggy and wet.

And then two days later, as we rounded a corner in the north of the island, near a place called Yaguajay, we found it – the perfect hill. It was only small, but it was clear of forest, faced north east and had charming fields all along the valley floor.

I flew. First negotiating with the farmer to climb the hill: No problem, go ahead. Then nearly an hour to the top in hot, sweating sunshine. Finally beating down tall brush to make a launch. Out front was the coastal plain, and in the distance the white sand of the Atlantic cayos that lie offshore and make Cuba so attractive for fishing, sunbathing and diving.

Vultures soared overhead. Gone was their unstable flapping of windy days and windless highways. Instead here they were steady, stately gliding machines. It was time to join them. I took a step and took off, into that high-definition version of our planet that only switches on when things go up. Viva la Cuba!

Meet the locals
I VISITED CUBA over winter in 2007/08. Six months ago there wasn’t much information on the web about flying there – I only found half a dozen sites listed. But now there’s a lot more – 44 sites in fact. And that’s thanks to Carlos Olivera. A Cuban by birth he now lives in Canada but goes back regularly to fly. He was just back from a two week April flying trip when I emailed him to talk about flying in Cuba.

What’s the flying scene like in Cuba?
We are about 130 pilots in the Federacion Cubana de Vuelo Libre. But only about one half actively fly, the others fly less than a weekend pilot. Becoming a pilot in Cuba is not straightforward. Paragliding equipment is not imported by anyone and the average income of a Cuban is $20US a month. Almost no one has a car and we hitchhike for transportation to the flying site. About the "competition scene" we are more friends than sport opponents. We try to meet once a year with the excuse of running a kind of competition, in which each pilot flies with the gear he has, regardless of the production year or the performance. At the moment 99% of the wings that are flying in Cuba came as donations from pilot friends around the world.

What are the country’s records?
The national (and unofficial) record for cross country is 45 km set by Sandy Salazar flying from Puerto de Boniato in Santiago de Cuba to a point near Guantanamo. The record was set on April 24 2005 with an Airea Tension. Actually, not many [local] pilots try to make long-distance flights, mostly because of airspace restrictions, and other reasons such as transportation and communication.

But there is potential?
In the inland sites and the dry season the base is normally between 1500 and 2500 masl. Last March a French pilot exceeded 2000m (1700magl) flying at Puerto de Boniato, Santiago de Cuba.

And the convergence?
Yes, that event looks great, but paraglider pilots in Cuba are not using that convergence. Hangglider pilots are a few, all living in the Isla de la Juventud, and yes, they fly it.

How many hangies are there?
About 15 to 20. The best pilot is Camilo Pérez. His record is about 30km from Santiago de Cuba.

What about sailplanes?
We don't have any sailplanes in use actually, the sport was finished after the 90s with the economic crisis. [When the Soviet Union collapsed Cuba lost its main economic sponsor, leading to a decade of severe shortages.] In the 80s the sailplane pilots from the Aeroclub de San Nicolas de Bari did a flight from Las Tunas to Havana (about 500km) using that convergence but after the Soviets left Cuba the aeroclub closed for necessity of equipment.

I’ve got two weeks in Cuba – where should I go?
I would try to rent a jeep and travel along the country in a kind of expedition, exploring as many flying sites as possible and sharing with lot of different pilots. For experienced XC pilots the best sites are in the east part of the country: Sierra de Boniato in Santiago de Cuba, Pilon in Granma and others. For recreational pilots we have the best ridge-soaring hill in front of the beach in Havana (El Fraile), and there is another in the Isla de la Juventud.

You have a problem with the FAI, what’s that?
The problem with the FAI is that Cuba tried to pay [to join] but the transaction goes through an American bank and it’s not allowed because of the US embargo. I asked the FAI to let me pay for Cuba but they didn’t let me. So Cuban pilots can’t be in any international competitions or record any records. How can I publicise this? [You just have].

I had a great time in Cuba, but had trouble finding sites. Where’s the info?
Here: www.carlosparaglide.com and http://volarencuba.blogspot.com. Check the pics from my site – I posted new photos from my 2008 tour to Cuba. Check the one of the Cuba home-made tow with a Russian car and the video of the accident.

GuardianEnvironment: Cuba's organic revolution

2008-04-28T21:21:00.004Z

Organoponico plaza, Havana, Cuba

Guardian.co.uk

April 4 2008

BELOW THE HIGH CEILINGS of the Telegraph hotel in Bayamo, south-east Cuba, the barman is mixing a perfect mojito. Rum, sugarcane juice, lime, carbonated water, and a whole sprig of mint.

But the key ingredient isn't any old mint. This is mint, as the Cubans say, "from the patio". Or at least, from the hotel's own rooftop garden.

"It's not very big," says the barman, "just two boxes." But it's where the hotel grows all its mint for its mojitos. And if there's a run on mojitos, what then? "El organiponico," he replies. An organic vegetable garden on the outskirts of Bayamo has all the mint you could wish for, he explains. Read more...

GuardianTravel: House of the jaguar

2008-03-28T03:06:00.012Z

Inside Saint John the Baptist Church, Chamula, Chiapas, Mexico, 1950s, where today it is strictly prohibited to take photographs. Photo: Na Bolom

Guardian.co.uk
March 25 2008

Na Bolom is a hotel and centre of excellence dedicated to the Maya and remote Lacandon people of Chiapas. Ed Ewing visits this unique place to discover more about Mexico's indigenous cultures.

SITTING DOWN to dinner was a little disappointing. "I expected Francois Mitterand and Frida Kahlo," joked retired languages teacher Mary, who together with her ex-GP husband was backpacking through south-east Mexico. Read more...

Or see the gallery of pictures...

GuardianTravel: Slow train across Cuba

2008-03-17T02:37:00.005Z

Slow train across Cuba
Guardian.co.uk

February 21 2008

THE HERSHEY TRAIN was built in 1917 by the chocolate company to transport workers. Now anyone can jump aboard for a fascinating - if somewhat unreliable - insight into the country, reports Ed Ewing. A travel article from Cuba...

Digital Arts

2008-02-10T18:48:00.000Z

Lots of articles from the January and February issue of Digital Arts magazine, Britain´s leading magazines for digital creative types:

Zune into the ballad of Tina Pink
Monday 17 Dec 2007
Microsoft got one of the hippest commercial directors around to make two spots promoting the Zune, their answer to the iPod.

The heart of the matter
Monday 24 Dec 2007
When Flora wanted to promote the health benefits of seeds they turned to post house Absolute and Seed Man was the result.

The rising stars of design
Monday 07 Jan 2008
Check out the new talent you should be looking to commission and be inspired by in the coming 12 months.

So tell me about yourself...
Wednesday 09 Jan 2008
Don’t fret, help is at hand with Digital Arts’ guide to finding the right creative for your role.

Lola illustrates the power of the planet
Monday 21 Jan 2008
With stunning photo-real visual-effects sequences, Lola's work for the BBC helps tell the story of the Earth's creation.

Digital Arts magazine: news

2007-11-22T16:21:00.000Z

I'm in at Digital Arts magazine, writing features for the magazine. A couple of years ago this used to be a quiet little place. Now it's a full-on online news room which requires journos to file x-number of news stories before morning coffee. Here are mine from today, November 22 2007:

Lola does post production on BBC’s ‘Earth’
UK POST house Lola Post Production has revealed it worked on the BBC’s new natural history series, Earth: The Power of the Planet.

Spanish Oscars announce animation nominees
THE BEST animated short film nominees for the Goya Awards have been announced.

Alzheimer’s Web site launched
A WEB SITE for those living with Alzheimer’s disease has been launched.

Online game launched to 'get kids outside'
INDEPENDENT games designer Wildebeest Games has released an online sailing simulator designed to encourage children to ditch the computer and head outside.

Ed Ewing

Coupe Icare 2011: Blogging

Classic Routes: Book

The Guardian: Bylines

Paramotor Magazine: Issue 27

Kendal Mountain Festival 2011

Cross Country 137: The sharp end

Paramotor Magazine: Issue 26

Cross Country: Issue 136

Paramotor Magazine: Avoiding Airspace

London riots: Lewisham damage

Waiting to board: Interview with Cheapflights.com

Cross Country: Rio de Janeiro

Cross Country: The Red Bull X-Alps 2011: X-Alps Fever

Paramotor Mag: Racing the Tide

Paramotor Mag: Edina Koleszar

Cross Country: The Adventure Issue

Cross Country: Squash Falconer

Paramotor Magazine: The Real Santa

Cross Country magazine: Issue 133 + poster

Cross Country magazine: Flatland 200 km

Cross Country magazine: L'homme volant

Paramotor Magazine: White Whales

Paramotor Magazine: Provence

Cross Country 132

Cross Country: Kirsty Cameron

Midwinter Uplift

Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild - award

Free flight night at Kendal Mountain Festival

Cross Country: Infinite Tandem / Blogging the Coupe Icare

Cross Country: Nova Dasalla

Paramotor Magazine: ‘Crash, Bang, Wallop’

Cross Country: History of Paragliding in the Himalaya

Cross Country Travel Guide 2010 / 11

Cross Country: Shock and Awe

Paramotor Magazine: Infinity and Beyond

Cross Country: Northern Lights

Cross Country: Lone Star

Cross Country: Sky Gods For Hire

Video: Lyngen, Norway

Paramotor Magazine: Tom de Dorlodot

Cross Country: Ama Dablam interview and podcast

Cross Country: Game of Shadows

XCmag.com: Live blogging

Paramotor Magazine: Reindeer Man

Paramotor Magazine: Direct Action

Paramotor Magazine: Surf’s Up! 4,000 km of it

Cross Country: Brazil Special

Cross Country: Spanish Fly

Cross Country: Paragliding from Manaslu

Paramotor Magazine: Mark Olson: Professor Paramotor

Paramotor Magazine: Emilia Plak

Cross Country: Manfred Ruhmer profile

XCmag.com: Birdman of the Karakoram

Paramotor Magazine: Michel Carnet: Loaded Deck

Paramotor Magazine: Record-Chasing in Pakistan

Paramotor Magazine: Reserve Tangle

Paramotor Magazine: World Championships 2009

Cross Country: September 2009

Cross Country: Alex Ploner profile

Cross Country: The Great Game

Cross Country: Team America

Guardian Travel: The experts' guide to UK National Parks

Cross Country: Red Bull X-Alps

World Hang Gliding Championships

Paramotor Magazine: From here to Timbuktu

Financial Times: Shooting the breeze

Cross Country: Debu´s World

African Air: George Steinmetz

GuardianTravel interactive: Brazil's best carnival

Cross Country: Dragon slaying

Cross Country: Feel the force

GuardianTravel: Che's last stand

GuardianMoney: Ten of the best ... ways to cut the cost of Christmas

GuardianMoney: Christmas bargains take a pounding

Last December you could have saved a fortune shopping in America and Europe - now the exchange rate makes that very difficult, says Ed Ewing

GuardianTravel: Downstream in Bruce Parry's footsteps

Guardian TravelOctober 20 2008

You don't have to be an ex-marine and survival expert to get close to the Amazon. Ed Ewing slings up his hammock with the locals for a three-day boat ride down river

Getting there

Guardian Travel
October 20 2008