Le Franco Phoney

The Coupe Icare (Icarus Cup) was held last weekend, just south of Chambéry. So, in our typical disorganised manner, we decided at 1am on Saturday night to spend Sunday watching the paragliders take part in the annual event. Although a strong wind at the landing area prevented many paragliders from taking off, the day was lots of fun and the entertainment was great. One wing that did take off was a tandem team with an eagle attached to the passenger’s arm. As they took off, so did the eagle, who then flew behind and around the wing as if it was a giant mum. Every now and again, it landed on the passenger’s arm again, and they stayed airborn for quite a long time.

Meanwhile, the on-ground entertainment took over. Adam and Eve featured in a show where a flying apple was offered to them. Eating it, despite God’s warnings, gave them wings, and, had the wind not been as dangerous for landing, they would have flown at that point of the show. Instead, they flapped their arms around like birds and ran around to emulate flight. Airline hostesses (not all females) arrived for the next show, before they handed out free drinks to the crowd in proper airline hostest style. Meanwhile special solar balloons, made by a Brazilian man (pictured  in a photo below) who is now an outlaw after the balloons were banned in Brazil, floated and sank above the crowd and into the distance.

Other notable parts of the day included:

• seeing the famous speed rider (a sport like paragliding, but with skis attached and using a very small wing), Michael Reignier, who spends most of winter speed riding in La Clusaz take off and sink fast with his tiny wing (but apparently landed without a problem);
• watching a replica of an antique NASA test wing be inflated (red, white and blue in photos below);
• checking out the atrociously bad fashion on offer for paragliders needing to stay warm in the air (it was so 80s!); and,
• seeing a photo I took at the Dune du Pilat in a paragliding magazine!

The Dune du Pilat is Europe’s largest sand dune, but, like Europe’s highest road, there is some confusion: signposts for Dune du Pilat are often twinned with signposts for Dune de Pyla . What? Are there two giant dunes next to each other? Nope: the village next to the Dune du Pilat is called Pyla-sur-Mer (which means ‘Pyla by the sea’) and over time, the dune has been misspelt to match the village, and now, both spellings are acceptable. At least, this is what Wikipedia told me, but my travel partner swears that he saw signposts for Pilat-sur-Mer as well!

Climbing the dune is hard work, but well worth the effort, with lovely views of the beach front from the top including a sand bar with lots of moored boats that are completely out of the water at low tide. In fact, you can see from some of the photos below just how steep the dune is, but once you’re at the top, the side leading down to the beach is far easier (phew!). Annoyingly, I saw one guy run up the steep side of the dune and tumble down at least twice while I was walking up it slowly. I can only imagine he was doing some sort of Rocky 4 endurance training (think back to Sylvester Stallone in snow-covered Russia, running with logs of wood and pulling carts around as if he was a horse and you’ve got an idea how silly this guy also looked). Meanwhile, I stopped every ten steps to ‘look at the view’. It had nothing to do with my aching leg muscles or over-inflated lungs feeling like they might collapse. No, it was all about the view.

We managed to camp within fifteen metres of the dune at the Pyla Camping (or should that be Pilat?) caravan park (lots of French entertainment thrown in for free: we witnessed a foam party which kids were literally lost in). The dune gets the big thumbs up from me: I really enjoyed it.

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