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Euro Tour Refresh - we just completed a great three week holiday in 2012 through Europe and drove approximately 6500 kms to see the sites & sounds.
Trip Highlights:
Saleve near Geneva, Switzerland - Corinne Stolz-Orava's home site. Cable Car access to the NW launches, and paved road drive up to Les Crets S/SW Launches. Awesome scenery but too windy to fly the one day we were there. A must see location to stay for a week, you can rent a room at the B&B up at Les Crets for 40 euros a night. The Swiss-French border runs through this area and you never know what country you are in.
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| From euro2012 |
Annecy, France - south of Geneva is a Paraglider Mecca with many launches and a great infrastructure with shuttles and landing zones all around. Colleen flew a sled ride off Montmin on our first few days in Europe, along with about 60 other pilots on a cloudy day. Hotels run about 60 euros a night with breakfast included. Nicole & Alex camped at a Doussard campground for cheaper and the shuttles picked them up there.
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St. Hilaire de Touvet, France - the home site for Coupe Icare, a free flight festival that is in its 39th year. Three days of flying, product shows, acro demos, Costume Competitions, attended by 40,000 people. Awesome flying location with a funiculaire cable railway to the top, and an LZ a short walk back to the funiculaire. We stayed in a Holiday Inn Express at the bottom as most of the local rooms were booked up, but many stayed on top in the B&B's for less than 50 euros a night.
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Canazei, Italy and the Dolomites - a great mid September destination with cable cars to most launch sites, huge LZs and a few drive up sites with easy top-landing options. The Dolomites are awesome and we saw 100 paragliders, hanggliders, speed-fliers all flying here despite some days blowing at +25-30 kph in the air, but smooth. We spent 5 days here in Hotel Irma for 48 euros a night each including breakfast and a three course dinner. Great ambience with pilots here from Holland & Austria all staying here too.
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Gourdon , France - head office for Ozone and we saw why they are based here. +300 flyable/soarable days of a year makes this an ideal testing ground for new designs. We flew Gourdon and Lachens launches and saw another 15 sites all within 45 minutes drive, facing every direction. We saw Russ Ogden and the Ozone team test flying a new Ozone Buzz Z4 prototype and they were doing the entire EN test protocol and top-landing to try other protos too. Good flying here for the 2 days we were here, and Nicole had a 90 kms O&R flight at St. Andre not far from here. Hotels are in the +130 euro range as we are in the South of France near Nice, but there is camping all around.
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Saint-Vincents-les-Forts, France - a cool site near a huge lake that reminded us of Chelan, WA. Apple orchards and mountains all around here. The launch is small with a top-landing area 6 meters lower near the parking area, not recommended for beginners. We saw some locals doing a small triangle flight here but Alex & Nicole had some nice XCs here. There was camping and hotels here but we did not price them out as we were heading north that day to get nearer Frankfurt Airport.
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Interlaken, Switzerland - a beautiful Swiss town surrounded by two lakes and the Swiss Alps. Many launch sites serviced by trains and cable cars. The main LZ is a retired army airstrip, with another big LZ in the town park. Get your credit card ready as a cheap hotel is 170 euros and they were all full. Dinner is also pricy unless you eat at McDonalds in downtown. Jack & Derek stayed here a few years ago and found a cheaper place but this was a last minute idea to fly here on the way home and we did no research. Great flying conditions the two days we were here with 60-70 gliders, sailplanes and sky-divers all sharing the sky.
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| From euro2012 |
We used Paraglidingearth.com to find the sites and get the site briefings and it worked out very well.
We ran hard to see all these sites and dodge some rainy weather but recommend being here around September 7th for three weeks landing in Geneva to start off the trip.
Gas is between 1.60 - 2.00 euros a litre. Tolls are expensive in Italy but you go fast, if you want more scenery stay on the non-toll roads. The German Autobahn is a treat with no speed limits and the fancier cars averaging +200 kph, so stay out of the fast lanes.
We rented a Fiat 500 online for 20 CDN per day plus insurance and when we arrived they only had larger Opel vehicles which worked out better as we brought a lot of stuff, but probably burned more fuel. We averaged 7 litres per 100 kms according to the in dash computer screen.
We had a borrowed Garmin Nuvi GPS that got us lost a few times, and by the end of the trip we ignored it most of the time and used a road map.
Click here for the FlyBC Euro Album 2012.