Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the CloudBase Mayhem. Happy New Year. Happy 25. Hope you've got some good plans shaping up and some good flying adventures happening. On that note, my guest today is Tim Pentreath, who we interviewed almost exactly to the day four years ago in 21, as he was getting going with his gumball rallies across the Alps. These are no charge. Just show up and see how far you get rallies in the Alps with various levels of ability. And just people wanting to show up and have fun and have little bivvies in the Alps. They've been having a great time, and I've been following closely as Tim puts out these fantastic videos of their marches.
And it looks like they have a ton of fun. So I wanted to follow up with Tim. The first one was really about just how they handle the logistics and the equipment and a lot of real specific advice about doing bull biv. If you didn't catch that one, go back and grab it. Just put in a search term on the website, Tim Pentreath, and you'll find it. We put it out January 1st, 21, and here we are, January 1st, 25. I'm heading off for Valle here in a few days, which will be a lot of fun to go rally around. And at the moment... On that note, let's get back to the now with Tim Pentreath. Enjoy this episode with a good buddy of mine. He's up in the UK and has a lot of fun. Been flying for over 30 years now.
And here's just more information on tackling the Alps. That's one of the main questions I get is, when should I go? What should I bring? How to bivvy? And this answers a lot of that. If you've never done bivvy and been really keen to try it, you should... Check out what they're doing. Like I said, there's no charge for this. There's no guiding. You just show up and they create a good communication network and a good way to track one another and communication channels and pair people off with like abilities and start at A and see how far you get. And something I'd love to go do with these guys one of these days. So, they're having a ball. Here we go. Tim Pentreath with the Gumball Rally.
Enjoy. Happy New Year, everybody.
Tim, good to have you on the show again, man. How are you? It's a
pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very well, thank you. Yeah. It's a pleasure to be on your show again. Thanks very much. Yeah.
Well, you know, last time I saw you in person, I believe, was when we were up there at the lakes and I can't... I don't know, 2016, 2017. It's been a while, but I have been keenly following your Gumball Rallies. That's what you call them, right? Your Gumball Rallies across the Alps. Gumball Trans-Alp Rally. Trans-Alp Rally, yeah.
Yeah. Named after that movie, the Gumball 3000. Yeah.
I mean, and it's been... You do a really good job of documenting it. And what I love about it is it just seems like an outrageous good time. It's just really fun. It seems like that's the goal, right? It's just to have a really good time.
That's basically it, yeah. And it's have fun, be safe, and to introduce... You know, experienced flyers who are experienced in the mountains as well, but who've never quite plucked up courage to do Volviv on their own. You know, to be able to do it in a supportive environment. Not necessarily sticking together as a group the whole time, but I mean, we've had big numbers on some of the recent ones, so it's never going to stick together as a group. But, you know, you can find your level within it and stick with a smaller group.
And how do you go about organizing it? And what are the kind of the rules, the ramifications? I mean, can anybody... Can anybody join? Does it cost money? All those kind of things. How do you handle the logistics of it all?
Everyone is aware that it's, you know, everyone's on their own when they're there, really. You know, you have to be able to fend for yourself. So if a random person comes up to me and says, can I join? I always make sure I have a, you know, check out their flights on X contest or whatever. In Alpine sort of environment. I mean, it's one thing flying 100K out and return in beer, for example, where you're just blasting up and down a ridge effectively with no van. I mean, it's a lot of valley winds, but in the Alps, it's, it can be a different story. Yeah. And as for, as for cost, there's no cost. I don't, I don't charge anything. Right. Once, once you start charging, you get into all sorts of legal ramifications in France, especially. Sure. You know, because you're effectively an instructor or a guide and it's a lose the house scenario.
And
you've done it, you've, you've done it every, every summer, right? For the last, I mean, what, what, what edition was this last one?
Well, this would have been the fourth sort of official. Gumball, shall we say that if you like, there was a pre, a prequel, a pre Gumball in 2018. No way. 2019 was the first one I did with a bunch of mates year before that. I just did a little short vol biv with my buddy, Nigel, Nigel Cooper, who actually joined us on this year's Gumball, which was great. But yeah, so 2019 is four of us did the same, did basically that trip. And then 2020, we actually called it the Gumball Trans Alp rally. So yeah, fourth edition. So next year, fifth year. Yeah. It'll be a, it'll be a big one.
Yeah. What's the maximum number of pilots you've had on it? 23.
Sorry. 2023. No, no. 2023. There were probably more than 23. There was probably, I think it was about 25 of us. There was a whole bunch of Northern lads who came down from the Lake district who really swelled the numbers this year. I think it was 13. Okay. Which is a good, a good size. Yeah.
And then are, do you kind of, are you the, the kingpin when it comes to, okay, this, this is the route and this is where we're going to start and end. I mean, do you kind of do that or, I mean, is everybody kind of on the same page?
Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, a few people, well, most people will join, you know, we, we traditionally started in St. Andre down in the South of France in 2023, because of the forecast down there, we actually started in Shamroos, near Grenoble. Um, and that was a sort of fairly last minute decision to change. Yeah. We, we'll discuss it and, and, you know, before beforehand, we go. Through, I do some, uh, zoom calls and we go through the routes for, for people who are not familiar with that area. Talk about crux points, uh, you know, maybe even go into the detail of what sort of height you need to cross certain, you know, valleys, et cetera. So, yeah, we do a bit of briefing beforehand.
And is, is the style of it, uh, you know, try to top land at the end of the day and, and fully bivvy or as the style of it, uh, you know, sometimes bivvy, sometimes jump in a hotel. How, how does all that work?
It's entirely up to, up to personal preference. I mean, the best times are when you get a group of you and you land up high and you have a brilliant night together and then short hike to a takeoff in the morning or whatever. But some people prefer, you know, a nice steak and glass of wine. Easy
to find in the
Alps. Steve, you know who you are. He listens to this. And Cyprian. Yeah. They like their, they like their steaks. So, I mean, yeah, that's not every night, of course, but, uh, so it's, it's a personal preference.
Okay. If you got quite an international crew there or is it mostly Brits or how does that work?
It's mostly Brits, but we've had, uh, some Americans, uh, over the years we've had Italians, we've had French, we've had, uh, Venezuelan pilots. Um, so yeah, it's, uh, it's pretty multinational. So, yeah, majority of Brits for sure. But yeah, we've had a great cross section.
How does your own personal packing work out? I mean, are you, are you, or how does your own style, what are the, what are you trying to accomplish? I mean, are you, are you filling your bag with five days of stuff or two days or, you know, are you always trying to tent? Yeah.
My preference is always to camp somewhere. Yeah. Okay. If the, if the weather's turns really bad, then I'll. You know, couch surf somewhere or, or take a B and B or whatever, but there's only been one, one time when I ended up actually staying a couple of nights in, uh, my brother's wife's family have a chalet in Verbier and, uh, yeah, I had a couple of pleasant nights there, but yeah, so I will, I will pack normally about five days worth of adventure food and breakfast and stuff. So, yeah. And that normally works out pretty well for if you're going for about 10 days, you end up eating out quite a lot of the time. Coffee and croissants quite all the time. There's always restaurants everywhere. Yeah,
sure. So easy in the Alps. Do you guys typically fix a week way in advance or is it really weather driven? Okay. Everybody's ready to go at a moment's notice and you, you peel out from bath and head down when it looks like you got a good window.
Yeah. I mean, I think that would be ideal to do that, but for quite a lot of people, it's just unrealistic. They need to book the holidays in advance. So, yeah, we. We're looking at dates at the moment. Historically, we've been pretty lucky in July, 2023, the weather was not so good that week. This, this year we really, you know, we had a great, we were pretty lucky actually this, this year because the weather in the Alps has generally been pretty mixed, should we say? And yeah, we got a great week. Yeah. About a week before it turned. And then, um, a couple of guys stayed on, carried on flying a bit longer. In fact, one guy, Raphael, Polish guy. Yeah. He spent a month out there, I think, or six weeks. Just. Slowly and steadily making his way east towards Slovenia.
It's always a bit of a gamble, but we do have a bit of flexibility with, uh, with destinations or starting points, you know, destinations. What I mean by that is where we fly to. We changed, like I said, uh, last year from St. Andre to Chamruz just because it was super windy down in St. Andre. Are
you, are you typically flying into Nice then and getting up to St. Andre?
Yeah. Most people are. Yeah. And
then, and then.
And it's just such a nice little.
It's just such a nice little
journey from, uh, from Nice up to St. Andre. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's fantastic. And
then are you, are you destination unknown every time you don't have anything in mind? I would imagine, right. You're just going to go as far as you can. As far as you can. Yeah.
And until, um, until the weather changes or, you know, you run out of time or whatever, but, you know, we follow roughly the same route up towards Chamonix and then, you know, head down the, uh, the Rhone Valley.
So you kind of backdoor into. Into Verbier typically, and then jump and, and start flying up the, up the Volus and, and then keep going. What's the farthest you guys have made it so far of all the years? I think it was probably 20, 20,
I think I, I made it to almost to Bassano. So that was about 800 kilometers, uh, over 10 days. I was sort of on my own by that stage. Others were, I went to Chris, Chris made it to Lake Como, I think. Uh. Uh. Uh. And this was, this was in July, but some guys say again, this was
in July that year.
Yeah. It's always, we've always, it's always been in July. Yeah. I mean, in fact, I think two years ago, Roberto, he's the Venezuelan pilot and Cyprian is Romanian, but lives in the UK. They made it all the way to Slovenia. They just stayed on. They, I think they had a month or three weeks. So, yeah. So some people have done the full, the full Transalps really. Yeah. I've never done, I've, you know, I've, I've run out of time. Uh, before then. So I've never managed to do, to do the whole thing.
Hey, I guess, I guess, because most of the time you're, you're tenting or bivvying in July, have you found it? I'm asking questions cause I get a lot of people asking about, you know, Hey, I want to do it my first bivvy in July. So I'm going to ask you a lot of these kind of generic questions that people that just don't know, but is it hard to find accommodation? Yeah. I mean, you know, obviously you can't book anything in advance, you know, you don't know where you're going to be, but is it, you know, cause I know. It gets, it tends to get more busy kind of early July when the kids start getting out of school and a lot of travel, especially post COVID. I
mean, France, France, I don't think there's any problem in July because August is traditionally when they, all the French go on holidays. I don't think anyone's had any problems. This is obviously for, you know, for people who, you know, the weather's bad, they want to find a, a B and B or whatever, or a hotel. I don't think there's, I don't think there's a problem. I mean, refuges, refugios in Italy. They're. They're dotted around the place. I, I don't know whether you have much luck just, you know, landing by them and, and asking for a bed. I don't know. I suspect in July, you're probably okay. Yeah. The mountains are never crowded though. There's always, there's always space on top of them. Yeah, that's right. Isn't it?
I mean, the, I guess it's quite a bit different in June, but the, that last June when I did the X-Alps coverage, you know, so I wasn't racing in it, but. Yeah. You know, the refugios were super easy. It just, you know. Tracee May was fine. The one in the, in the Brenta was fine. You know, it was, yeah, it was, you just rock up, knock on the door and seem, seemed okay. But that's June. I know June's less busy even.
Yeah. Come August, you might have issues in, in some of the more popular areas. I think unless you're trying to land on the side of Mont Blanc or something, you'd probably be okay.
Right, right. I'm curious from, you know, those initial years, the, just you and a mate. In 2018 and then, you know, up to more than 20. What is, what has changed for you, if anything, philosophically, safety wise, you know, what, what are some of the, you know, looking back, some of the points that have, that have helped define how you do it? Good question.
Nothing intrinsically has really changed. We've always, it's always been a, you know, we're, we're always flying and making plans in a. supportive and collaborative sort of manner sharing ideas looking at weather forecasts together that sort of thing looking out for each other we have had you know we have had people injure themselves in previous years including myself actually we've got a sort of network of people back home who are also sort of looking out for us on live track so you know there is an emphasis on safety there's a emphasis on everyone you know reports in when they land and and effectively does a sign to fly in the morning you know before they take off yeah i mean that works because we say we've got 20 people we'll split it into we'll have four or five different little safety groups telegram groups have a sort of team leader in each in each group as it were who's responsible for making sure everyone signs in and signs out as it were what
what what is what how do you guys communicate are using radios or just telegram groups in reach what what's the kind of stuff you guys have for safety on
the grounds we it will tend to be telegram in the air it's been a mixture in the past of some people using zello some people using radios this year and i think last year i went zello only uh i just didn't want the extra weight and complications of a radio having to have a charger and all that malarkey so yeah cheap cheap headset with a little boom mic and um you know bluetooth headset and it you know it works really well really well in the apps this is zello it's great being able to answer people who have got questions in the air or like there was a last year there was an occasion where i was like 50 miles ahead and i was i hadn't taken off yet or i'd landed i can't quite remember and i could see what uh this guy um craig was was doing and i said and i knew he was on zello and we're mild you know well outside radio range but i was able to tell him you know take that route
and i was able to
don't don't do what i did because it didn't work for me and he managed to glide all the way to fish ah cool whereas i landed you know just south of visp so that that really worked well yeah so yeah i i think i'll be encouraging everyone to get a bluetooth headset and and a push to talk and and and use zello yeah
that was that was what we used in the the last couple of my x-ops campaigns which with a lot of success i mean none of the x-ops people fly with radios but you gotta have something pretty good and we found that that worked really really pretty well i mean there were times where there'd be a long delay or whatever because you weren't in cell service but you know it would get it and it was quite quite easy to use yeah
it it tends to technically it works well in the alps because i think i guess they've got cell towers you know in the valleys but also on the mountaintops in places so you get a pretty you're never going to be flying thousands of meters above the mountaintops so you always you tend to be in cover but you're never going to be flying thousands of meters above the mountaintops you're never going to be flying thousands of meters above where i've whereas i found in the uk if you you know zello just doesn't doesn't work when you're doing the cross country flight because you're just above the cell coverage
tim i i have a a lot of listeners call in who you know who who aren't in the alps don't don't live there and they're not and they it's hard for them to imagine it's a little you know your first trip's a little overwhelming it's it's there's a lot of places you can start there's a ton of sites i mean they're just everywhere in the alps and uh but i i have a lot of people who are not in the alps and they're people ask you know hey i'd really like to go do something like you're doing every year like the gumball gumball but if they you know for people that don't have any background in the alps what would be your kind of top three you know here's the things you need to know before going to do this i
mean if they just want to pitch up on their own and just go for it well i would say well i mean the main thing that catches people out is the valley winds and storms so you know be be super wary of storms brewing up they can develop very quickly i mean you can't you can't learn by memory every single valley wind in the alps it's impossible but try and have an idea of some routes and have an idea of what the valley winds typically typically do in in those uh you know on along those routes speak to pilots if people want to approach me that's that's fine i can i can help but i'm you know i've the alps is a vast place and i'm not going to be able to do anything about it so i've only you know traveled on a few uh sort of main routes really so there's there's people with way more experience than than me obviously but yeah i would not be afraid to ask advice i
you know there's so many places to fly in the alps and i i think you can really you can almost throw a dart at an area and go and and and rock up and like i said talk to the locals and uh and and have a blast wherever you end up then it's it's more just weather isn't it but if it if it's bad all you're gonna do is wait it'll get good again or go somewhere else
you know hop on a train or go somewhere else that's the you know that is the transportation links in the alps are fantastic
back to the the people who join and and and how they join and that kind of thing what would you if you ever looked at uh someone and you don't know them and they'd love to join your your trip and you look at their x contest flights is there kind of a bar that they have to meet well what would you like to see that shows you hey you're you're probably ready for a journey like this yeah
i mean i think if if they've done some some of the sort of competitions like the used to be called the gin wide open i think it's something else now or the shabra open you know any of those sort of level and they've done 50k flights or 70k that sort of thing you know i mean in a competition environment it's a little bit different because you don't really have to think for yourself you're just basically following other people if you've certainly done those sort of distance flights on your own or just with some a smaller group of mates then then yeah i would look to see whether it's just in like the foothills of the alps you know which would be a bit different different to flying around mont blanc massif for example or some of the you know bigger mountains i mean essentially the bigger the mountains are the stronger the valley winds so you know i want to see you know relevant experience really but i mean if someone really wants to come we can't really stop them they can rock up in which case we'll we'll say well let's just take it really steady watch out here we'll just give them as much advice as possible but at the end of the day it is everyone for themselves you
you said that you kind of break people down and you have almost a team leader and you know a group of four or so pilots in a group how do you decide those is that by experience
these are just safety groups so that they're not you wouldn't necessarily be flying together it's just they're just yeah we can be split up over 200 kilometers but we're still all checking with each other within that group it's just because i mean ideally you just have you know one group with 20 people in but that gets quite difficult to manage and check up so if you've got smaller groups it's just easier for one person to be able to keep track oh i see so yeah that that's but i mean people naturally sort of find other people who fly at the same level so yeah these little pods would form naturally
you you mentioned that you've been hurt and some other people have managed to you know injure themselves what's been the is there been a common theme there is that top landing is that getting caught in wind there's just been random what what has there been personally for me it's
it's been windy landings someone else a few years ago now he yeah he landed in a particularly windy place and i i can't remember the exact i know roughly where it was but i can't remember the exact scenario but i think he he had a collapse or low level collapse and came in quite hard he's he's he's fine another guy yeah just was coming to landing and he did yeah bad one guy ended up in some trees so yeah a mixture for me personally it was the first the first year i was just it was stupid i was crossing over i was heading along the valet or wallace near fiche and i was trying to cross over onto the south side and i'd done exactly that move two years previously and didn't i thought it's going to work exactly the same and i failed to spot the signs of the uh the northerly coming up and i was like oh my god i'm going to have to do this over and over the grimsel pass so it was it was pretty windy on the south side i arrived a bit lower than
where i'd arrived at two years ago and um all of a sudden i was in horrendous sink and really rotary air i just had no choice but to dive down the valley which is the valley that leads up to the newfoundland pass and the wind was switching and when i landed i did i landed downwind pretty fast once i packed up and walking down the hill the wind was blowing from the other direction and you know it would have been fine it was it was bizarre but yeah nasty cut on my leg but i was sort of walking wounded and made my way uh walked down to the uh the village at the bottom hopped on a train and uh you know got myself checked out at a hospital the
grimsel snake struck the
grimsel snake she's a snarky
little one so
yeah i'm very very wary of that now and what was so stupid is that yeah as i was crossing the valley there i had i had 10 minutes i could have fired up web browser looked at winds.mobi and and seen exactly what was going on there and in fact you could you could see that the cloud sort of spilling over but i just i was overconfident i thought oh yeah done it before i made this move really successfully two years before and it's going to work exactly the same yeah so yeah that was a good lesson for me so it just goes to show you know every day is still a school day in some respects you
mentioned windsmobi which i use as well i use wind alert which just kind of captures them all in the same kind of thing but what uh what tech are you using for for forecasting for stuff in the air uh radar what are you using to both plan but also on the fly yeah
so weather apps um on the morning or the day before we're looking at windy looking at um meteo parapont looking at soaring meteo you know whichever whichever one's giving the best forecast um yeah quite liking soaring meteo they've got some new models um and it's quite good
to be able to do that and i think it's a good thing to be able to do that and i think
a nice easy to use um interface which gives you a lot of information in one go meteo parapont as well has a has a really nice easy to use interface i find it overestimates the wind a bit don't know why that would be but you're always a bit wary of thinking it always you know overestimates because one day you'll get caught out like that meteo blue as well it's got some good good uh you know and graphics and uh animations but yeah so it's a sort of mixture it's um yeah it's no one hard and fast app that i would sort of use all the time whilst whilst we're flying and checking i mean the main thing is wanting to check out winds so in switzerland the uh meteo swiss app is really good it's got wind animations um or wind you know spot readings from from lots of different places in valleys and mountaintops um yeah winds.mobi
are you
looking at are you looking at live cams much not
when flying but uh i have i have looked at them in the past you know to when was it would have been probably three years ago i was stuck on mont noble uh which is on the south side of the sion valley just dead in fact just sort of above sion i think more or less and i thought i'd glide over to the other side onto the north side to get the thermals but the cloud just i was ended up you know clagged in in cloud but i was checking the webcams in the valley i could see that is this cloud was just purely on the hilltops the valley was completely clear so i made the decision right i gotta lob off and fly straight out and get in the clear air and then yeah it worked perfectly
went down through the cloud and bang i could see everything yeah
glorious sunshine yeah exactly so yeah i mean you know i could see there's no nothing in front of me you know no cables it was just taken off in clear air so i knew it was safe to do that i
think i asked you this on the last one but uh any particular flight of all these gumballs just really stand out you know you you make these great kind of summary videos uh of your of your trips that people love i love they're amazing they're really well done but uh anything just really stand out you know something you'd you'd tell your little ones one day ah this one flight i've
had a few but um there's one day i did just over 200k from san andre that ended up at uh just at the landing field at mont lambert so that was a really cool flight i landed six seven o 'clock something like that there were these french youths shall we say having a barbecue and a few beers and i landed they offered me some food and that was that was terrific another really good flight was from verbier all the way to balanzona that was a stunning flight i did
that in the xops going the other way in 2015 that exact yeah yeah cool i
think that at the time that was my long flight
i did that in the xops going the other way in 2015 that
was my
long flight
i did that in
the xops
going the other way in 2015 that exact yeah yeah cool i think is flying out what else i mean every time you fly over the grimm's will pass and the firka pass that's always just spectacular there spectacular
and a little bit butt puckering yeah yeah he's going oh is it gonna strike is it gonna strike but yeah when it's good there it's doesn't it's no it can't be it's just it's incredible flying over that glacier and you're on the moon yeah
it's spectacular this year when well i flew over it twice actually on two different trips but the second trip with uh there were just four of us in in the group so it wasn't it wasn't it was like a gumball part two of a smaller you know it was a we felt this year uh we felt a little bit cheated by the way that we had sort of we actually had eight good days although on two of those days we didn't really make any forward progress but uh and then the weather changed so when i saw a little weather window in august early august i i put the word out said anything fancy joining me and yeah four of us we had a great flight over the grimm's will pass
and we had a great flight over the grimm's
pass and firka pass and thermaling with a with an eagle just by that glass glacier um but another really memorable flight was was in 2023 the gumball was over for me over prematurely this was the gumball where we didn't have the best of weather but i ended up landing on the south side of mont blanc and it was the wind had picked up quite a lot um and i got dragged into some boulders when when i landed yeah ended up gashing the same leg ended up walking off down to courmayeur and then got a bus to aosta to the hospital um where they looked after me fantastically but yeah about then yeah then i came home three weeks had my daughter's wedding and then a couple of weeks later i was out to the alps again i thought i spotted yeah again a nice little weather window from saint andre and i had an amazing flight from saint andre up through the middle of the ekron and landed near courcheval sort of area around there the three valleys and that was
that was just epic flying through that landscape so pretty
the akrons are incredible uh when when you hurt your leg was that the aosta were you at the west end of the aosta yeah
i you know up until then it had been fantastic beautiful and the plan i was with two other guys to start with and the plan was to fly up towards passy um but there were some big clouds there and i thought oh the clouds to the east look you know we're starting from which is above the town of beaufort and um so i sort of did my own thing headed headed east really around the south side of mont blanc an area i didn't know at all and it was a it was a beautiful flight it's going fantastically until and i i was trying to get up to verbier around the south but really cloud base wasn't high enough and i thought i'd be sheltered by the by mont blanc by the massive itself uh from the northwest sort of wind but instead the wind seemed to whistle around and accelerate through that valley so i'd
be sheltered by the by mont blanc by the massive itself uh from the south side and i decided
to land yeah call my ear was the nearest town but that was a you know it's about seven or eight mile walk down oh okay so
you were trying to get up and over from the south side i guess uh would that be like the saint bernard pass into uh there's that one town or siers and then up to verbier i guess that's i guess that's just to the east of the massif right you're you're just that's what yeah that's what i was planning to do cool
and i should have uh i maybe you could but there was some airspace uh shown as a danger area i think a firing range or something on on fly sky high just sort of where i was so i didn't want to go through it i was sticking to the west of it and it turns out that i don't think that danger area is active most of the time and in fact it's it's right by colder san bernard i think it to the to the it's just to the west of it i think and i think people fly through it all the time i didn't know this so i was avoiding it but yeah had i i had the height to sort of dive through that and it was would have been i think that would have been a very sensible decision
typically when you start in san andre is your is your line typically you know up to saint vincent you so you're flying the dorm use yeah yeah that's kind of a cool first day i mean if you had a lot of exactly a lot of people at the gumball just show up and do that and go pull dude yeah
blows their mind that's that's a
pretty mind-blowing flight we've had a few people
yeah i mean not a lot of people have done that but i think everyone makes it even even sort of regulars sometimes struggle you know we had some some people not get past uh the cheval blanc really that sort of area or land in in the boonies just north of the cheval blanc that gets pretty boony pretty quick but you can you it's amazing france you know these those guys um solemn hitch and just did a bit of leapfrogging others hiked up and and relaunched so you know somewhere on the the side of the dormitories so yeah there's there's plenty of options when you're flying
through it i think it's it's it's it's it's it's
that's the thing about the gumball yeah if you do land yeah bomb early you can either sort of stick with it just do your own thing or you can just leapfrog you can just put your thumb out get a bus or whatever and just catch up and then you know regroup with some other people the next day so yeah it's uh it works well like that some people have been known to take a train pretty much all the way from like like dean all the way up to chamonix i think
sure why not right you know it's
whatever works yeah absolutely we're still
seeing some beautiful country would you ever i don't know would you ever leapfrog right from the beginning and instead of starting in france would you start uh i don't know davos or something and go to slovenia or you know go do the pins gal no no
i think we should do that sometime just start somewhere else um it is tempting you know to fly some new areas i sort of touched upon doing this little uh trip in august and that was a real eye-opener for me i started in fiesh and i bought a my return air ticket that was so flew out to geneva on the thursday booked a return flight from from venice uh on tuesday so we had four flying days and so yeah to get as far as possible towards venice and uh had some amazing flights and covered some real new new new ground uh for me and especially the dolomites the last day was absolutely stunning but yeah it would be fun to start in chamonix see how far we can get east but i mean i think the appeal for some people is to start you know who've got more time as long as you start as far south as possible really and and then make their way all the way to slovenia like i was saying uh raffle did that this year slow time um see what people fancy doing you know 2025 yeah
right curious well before we started recording you mentioned you know you're you're saying that you're going to be doing a lot of now and you know i'm 52 now i definitely am finding myself thinking more about my i'm less durable than i certainly was when i was training for the X-Alps but just just in general you know the the vision's not as good uh a little bit harder to get out of bed in the morning you know a little more stiff definitely i just start thinking i'm thinking about it more that you know i can't i can't necessarily you know the crash reel we had in 2021 in that race it was i did a lot of crashing in that race and uh you know when you're training real hard you can kind of roll off a lot of that stuff but i start thinking about that you know
wombat is leaving yeah i got less
wombat these days exactly so uh just wondering how that factors into you know what you're doing and what your group is doing and how you i don't know is it something you guys even is you something you talk about something to think about i
don't think it's anything we specifically think about you know subconsciously or maybe not even subconscious consciously i think this year i was happy to take a little easier not pushing it um i don't know if i'm flying any difference or i'm not you know as a group i don't think we're doing any any difference um just because we're all getting older i say i'm probably i was probably the oldest but we had some youngsters there as well who you know did you have a great time too so i don't know it's uh yeah you just got to fly within your own limits and this year for me it was great actually it was a very sociable gumball for me way more time spent with other people than than in previous years so yeah i really enjoyed it
are you noticing your own personal flying goals are they have they shifted in the last couple years or or have or actually have they shifted because of the gumball are you finding you know less less need to x contest out every flight and more just flying for the aesthetic or you know yeah
i mean i certainly am not chasing kilometers in in x contest and i don't even do the uk national league anymore you know who doesn't do like doing nice long flights obviously this year when i got to chamonix flying from la cluzas it wasn't a huge long flight um you know up the aravi and then across to pasi i got to plan praz went down the valley a bit i thought do i push on on my own and by that stage i knew the other guys i saw had been a part of a group with the night before we all took off roughly together you know they were landing in passy and and chamonix and so i thought no so at this time i'm just gonna i top landed at plan prez and we had there was five of us i think in the end camping up at plan prez and it was such a great evening and a really great morning the next days and yeah in terms of my own flying goals and things yeah i love the aesthetic flights on that fish to feltra trip in august yeah the lines we took there were absolutely stunning you know back at home i'm not chasing every kilometer for sure i love doing 100k flights or even more 200k flights but i'm certainly not out you know every available opportunity and and because i'm not doing the league i'm much more relaxed if i miss a miss a good day you don't bother as much there'll be another yeah
yeah interesting cool um um you were saying before we started as well that you're not doing a ton of travel in the winter you know you're not doing big long haul fight flights i assume you're not going down to columbia or brazil or that kind of thing how do you bide your time uh with the with the winter blues and getting ready for the next season the winter blues yeah
re-watching my old videos
editing editing videos from the summer yeah uh just do more more local stuff on the on you know a bit more cycling a bit of paddle boarding on the on the river and canal um we just got a new puppy so we'll be doing well he's too young for long walks at the moment but uh training yeah just my wife might even get me doing a bit of diy better edit that bit out in case she ever listens
some honey do list coming your way yeah yeah
i'm in the world was best procrastinator when it comes to diy you, but
you were saying you you you were already thinking about dates for next year so you guys most likely be in july uh
yeah when i first was thinking about being involved big trips i did a bit of analysis you know looking at number of flights in different areas of the out you know number of flights over 100 kilometers or the number of days in which there were flights of over 100 kilometers and you know july seemed to be the most reliable you're not getting the biggest flights um but you're getting the the most days with with reliable weather but i think you know with what the weather's doing i think and especially last year it's less predictable yeah sure okay
well i don't know too much more for you but i'd love i think everybody'd love to know what you're flying what what are you using what what are you using for gear on these trips so
i've got a omega uls it's x helps five i suppose it you know it would have been called um it was absolutely love yeah two liner d two liner recently got a so i haven't got a super light harness i've got the lightness four now yeah fits all the gear in it's very comfortable so i like that a lot that's my main yeah that's the flying gear i'd
say i know you're a fly sky high user so you just extra battery and a phone and oh
yeah yeah my flight that's got an extra battery and i so i carry two 10 000 milliamp batteries i don't know why we say you know 10 000 milliamps why
batteries in reach of you know in reach mini exit tracer uh two flam is my very most of the time in the alps don't have to worry about charging yeah yeah solar panel as well anchor uh strapped onto the onto the front of my pod and
then are you carrying full sleeping bag stove pad tent and all that kind of stuff too yeah
yeah yeah personally i use a quilt but yeah um okay yeah all right yeah again and you know i i don't spend i try and spend as little as possible on on this sort of stuff so it's all it's all fairly budget stuff except well the the mattress is the thermarest neo air which i think is well it's the it's the first model so it's the noisy rustly model but uh it's very comfortable yeah and the same one and the tent and the the quilter from aliexpress um and they're fantastic great yeah really good i mean you can spend hundreds of dollars pounds on on sort of lightweight gear but i don't intend to walk miles and miles and miles with a kit so as long as it all fits in and there's the whole lot comes to about 20 22 kilograms something like that and a bit more you know add a bit for water they're just i mean food is uh quite that's heavy quite a lot of the weight you know the more days you cater for that significantly uh you know adds up significantly but i mean gets lighter as you go through yeah sure tim
thanks very much man as always it's a pleasure it's good to see you i uh really enjoyed getting your texts a couple nights ago and uh when i was flying to find the sailplane wave that was that was that was really thanks for reaching out that was fun i
enjoyed enjoyed following that it was uh definitely a cool thing to just follow along yeah yeah
i mean flying at 256 knots was uh that was new
yeah well i well i i was following in um uh a website called pure track.io which i recommend everyone check out it's a fantastic sort of aggregator of all your different trackers okay and yeah i had it set to kilometers an hour so when i was uh when it reached 440 kilometers an hour i thought bloody hell well i
didn't tell you so i was on the stick when you sent the text you said hey what you know you got to 397 i was so hoping you'd get to 400 and so right then i asked gordon i said hey man uh we got some people watching they want us to get a 400 he goes oh man that'll be easy he just pointed the nose down a little bit and and then right then the wave started getting really strong then and so we were we were going 250 you know we were over 250 for a while but we hit 256 and we were screaming up i mean we were going up and going that fast it was just this is ridiculous yeah
so you're you're basically you're nose down to get the speed yeah and we just stayed there but you're still going up
stayed pinned i mean i could tell he had because i had my hand on the state at that point he wanted the stick because we were going way too fast if we hit any turbulence or something but i mean i could tell he had the thing pretty pinned down and uh and still just the vario
you could hear it on some of your video
really yeah great and and then and then landed in time for breakfast at the exactly yeah
and i mean by the time we packed away the plane it was dumping rain i mean we knew that this was coming it got it came a little bit about an hour earlier and
then we were like oh my god we're going to be a little bit faster than
we were planning so i mean he he knew way in advance it wasn't going to be kind of any record day but yeah i think he stretched it out really as far as we could and
it was uh how far south of takeoff did you end up going i couldn't i wasn't quite sure
distance i we got down to whitney and mount whitney which is that we call it the whitney portal uh it was right beneath us and we did a little jog down there so we got all the way down there came back i don't know i'm guessing 20 miles 25 miles and went back down again because we could see on sky side it was going to light up you know we could see that the the wave was going to get even stronger and better and so he wanted to kind of pause a little bit down there before coming back making sure we could and when we turned around to go north you could just see our altitude over goal just start it was at zero and it just went a thousand two thousand three thousand four thousand five thousand six eleven i mean it was you could see we weren't going to have to make a single move which we didn't we didn't and we actually flew past it we flew past goal and went north and north a little bit further and then uh you could just see it was gonna it was time we had to get on the ground and it was i was impressed with how much wind they can land in luckily it was coming in pretty straight on the on the airfield because if it would have been sideways that i i'm sure he could have done it but it would have been pretty exciting because it was how it was 35 knots on the ground it was it was cooking just such a different thing yeah yeah
it's it's so it's it's like worlds apart from what we do worlds apart yeah
it's aviation and then you kind of change you stop right there but it was i would say uh you know i think he was just impressed with the knowledge you know he could you we know what's going on we just don't fly in those conditions but you know you could it was really neat being above the wave you know the the night when we were on the night vision goggles when we were you know twenty thousand twenty two thousand and it you know you could really see the the harmonics of the wave and all these things that i've only ever seen from the ground but you could you know we were above it so
you there were yeah so there were wave bars you could see the clouds exactly and you know and it was it
was neat because on the night vision goggles and you could see the lights underneath where there wasn't cloud and you could just see these rolls of you know in the domes and the domes would stretch north and be another and then no cloud and another row and you could just kind of see how it all works and you could see how he was was you know he would say okay well we're going to go through some period here we're going to get washed and then but we'll okay right about now and then we're going to hit it again and then you know 10 seconds later the variant start ripping again and you could just kind of see how you maneuver around in that kind of thing and you
never got any of the sort of uh the downdraft from the oh
yeah yeah we got really washed heading south you know because
we had quite a bit of wind on the nose and so that's where i was telling you we got down to we were actually going backwards at one point but we we went quite deep into the terrain and hoping to kind of move over to another kind of segment of wave and to our west and didn't get it and and we got down pretty low i think we were down i mean it's not low by our standards but we were kind of more in the train it was kind of thirteen fourteen thousand which at that level in the sierras you're you're not that far above the peaks and uh and then it was it was rowdy it was it was definitely and you but you could see it and at that point he was really looking more for rotor cloud below us so the you know the wave stuff was above us and we were just starting to get lenticular to that point there wasn't much moisture early on it was much more blue and as the day got more and more as this system pushed in we got a lot more moisture and you could really see everything very well but um but what saved us really was you know just off to our right there was these little bits of cloud and you can see them kind of they didn't look like normal clouds they were kind of rolly and he said oh okay there it is and he just banged over to it and it was very rough but then we started going up again and and it's when you're when you're in the rotor it's terrible but as soon as you get in the wave it's just you could take a nap it's just smooth like butter you don't yeah no jumping around or jerking around it's just
it's just it's just it's just it's just it's just it's just it's just
super smooth it's like being in a in a commercial jetliner it
went smooth i've never flown in wave myself but i know there's um up in the peak district which is sort of near near sheffield near the city of sheffield in sort of northern england there's you you do get in winter you get wave there off sort of above a site called lord's lord's seat i think it's called or around that sort of area and yeah people have had amazing smooth climbs up to three three and a half four thousand feet in in in winter it just looks spectacular i've never yeah yeah i've never been in the right place i don't
know what i anticipated but everything that i anticipated was different than it actually was i you know i the night vision goggles especially i i really can't believe what you can see with those things it's just incredible you see everything uh the same way of course but you know for example we could see the sun coming up an hour and a half before we could see the sun coming up you know what i mean yeah it's like
if you take a picture of the aurora with your phone it just sees so much more i guess
yeah and and you could you know it's looking east about four o 'clock in the morning it's winter here i mean the sun doesn't come up until 7 30 8 o 'clock and so uh with the time change and so you know but at four o 'clock 4 30 you could see it starting to get light in the east and you could
see the sun coming up and
go oh there's the sun come out and you take off your night vision goggles and it was dead black there was there was not nothing coming up but in the night vision goggles there was and uh yeah it was really really quite cool i mean taken off from a totally black runway yeah you know and you can see it all
yeah wow very exciting but i mean it's not it's not the same as flying cross country across the mountains and battling with rowdy thermals and no you know feeling just you know on the on a paraglider you just immerse in your environment aren't you you
really are yeah i i i was um impressed that that you have more of a feeling than i thought we would and i think that's because of the wave and everything i mean i think the standard glider flying would be less immersive than than this was for sure but but yeah you're right i mean you're you know that's why he's he's so keen on paragliding he loves what we do because it's just it's you know it's aviation but it's very different yeah you're not feeling it in the same way but it was cool it's neat going 300 miles an hour
well cool bud well hey thank you very much uh as always appreciate your time thanks for saying hello yeah let me chat to you again sailplane yeah and good luck with the future gumballs i'd like to join you on one of these they look they look like just a hoot
that'd be that'd be terrific yeah do that cool
talk to you soon great
thanks goving with lovely talking to you if
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