Soaring in the Sun in November 2011
Although Sunsoar have been travelling to Morocco to take advantage of the reliable weather for many years now this was our first trip to the Marrakech region and perhaps the best known flying site in the country at Aguergour. Like all our destinations, we had been before on a recce trip but this was our first flying holiday in this area.
Flights to Marrakech are cheap and frequent. We used Easyjet, which has daily flights from Gatwick and twice weekly flights from Manchester. With the huge cabin bag allowance for clothing etc. the 20Kg hold baggage was loads for our flying kit.
Pete and Ian arrived two days prior to the regular start date to check out the hotel, flying site and minibus, and in fact we did need to switch hotels as the one recommended to us turned out to be pretty run down. But we were soon installed in the very comfortable 3 star Tachfine Hotel right in the heart of the city and with easy access to the airport, flying site and the old walled city of Medina with its famous market.
Aguergour is a very long soarable ridge and about 1,700 ft high with an easy launch and vast landing options. It also seems to feature a pretty reliable house thermal just left of take-off which we made good use of during the 10 day trip. Light conditions most mornings meant easy extended top to bottoms for our EP clients to get to grips with all the CP tasks. Stronger lift including some huge smooth thermals later in the day gave some great flying to our qualified guys with height gains of 3,000ft and some long flights, (Andrew Holt logged over 4 hrs on one afternoon flight). Later in the afternoons tended to be gentler soaring conditions and it was sometimes a struggle to get everyone into the landing area as there was lots of buoyant lift under the spectacular sunsets.
We were there for 12 days of which 3 were unflyable and one where we missed the one hour window! But this gave us a chance to do the whole theory syllabus for CP & beyond, go shopping in the Old town Souk, and fit in some camel rides. Its a 10 minute walk to the take-off and there is food, drink and toilets at both launch and landing areas. A cold Coke is a nice way to finish off a long hot flight or a beer at the end of the day! The local lads will expertly pack your glider for you too, at a very reasonable cost (depending on your negotiating skills!) There is also jetski hire on a local lake, or Quad biking action available for those who fancy it.
A very enjoyable and successful trip, with a lot of hours of airtime and huge progress from everyone.Highlights included John Punch (who last flew 22 years ago) progressing from tandem passenger to confident pilot in a very short time, Andrew clocking up well over 6hours in two flights and Mark Senior climbing over 3,000ft and exploring the whole region by air, and Andy Clegg who on his 8th day of paragliding managed to thermal up about 1,000ft from close to the landing area to well above the launch and top land.
Ian and Pete also made good use of the tandem kit with Ian taking Hakim, one of the lads who works in the Gite in the landing area for a sunset flight. He was so keen he did not want to hand back the controls when it was time to land. We will be back in March 2012!
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