Well it was my good friend Dave's 70th birthday or something so he wanted to go somewhere other than Curium and as Lefkara has recently been scoped out as a flying site he wanted to go there. So Dave, Tim, Bitu, Pete, Demetris, Christakis, a few other Cypriots I don't know and I turned up and met at the landing field. We were met with the grinding noise of a Bulldozer which had just been employed to remove a derelict telegraph pole from the centre of the landing field, all the less for me to bump into then! :).
After observing for a few minutes we headed to the top, quite a tricky drive due to tight hairpins and narrow, near vertical ridge-line tracks. If you're of a weak disposition then I wouldn't bother but you're all paragliding types like me aren't you! so you'll all get a kick out of it when you crest the blind summit and immediately stop to avoid careering over the launch and down the other side!
When we arrived at the top the wind was blowing over the back albeit very weakly with a few weak thermic gusts pushing their way up the Southern slope so we waited until around 12:00 when the valley thermals were finally stronger than the met wind and we could launch. I was third to go and found the air to be quite buoyant along the ridge but not amazingly lifty. Dave came on the radio and suggested I try out to the Eastern side of the bowl where he thought there may be some more lift. He was right of course though I reckon he just wanted to use me as a wind dummy! The lift was short lived as I fumbled for my camera and quickly dropped out of it and ended up bobbing around in the valley between launch and the landing field. I played around with the little lift I could find there for a while before landing just on the entrance to the field a little low over the road for my liking but otherwise a nice soft touchdown.
You can find my track on Leonardo
here enjoy! I did :)
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