We've made a few visits in the Grasse area (fifteen kilometers inland from Cannes) only to discover that this is a favored paragliding and hang gliding site, especially in the winter, which the current weather appears to mimic. With the area dominated by the Mediterranean influence, it is possible to fly here all year round, while there is snow to the north in Laragne and the Alps.

At Saturday, we drove up to , a "perched" fortified village originally built for defensive purposes. It is high above the village of a few kilometers northeast of Grasse. Sure enough as we wound our way up we saw a couple of paragliders across the gorge to the east getting up under the cumulus clouds. Later, taking in the view from we could see an obvious hang glider and paraglider landing zone to the south near the village of Pont-du-Loup.

It turns out that the owners of the landing zone are a bunch of heirs that can't agree on what to do with the only open space that we could see, so it remains open. Otherwise landing in this area would be exciting.

The area around Nice and Grasse faces south (just like Santa Barbara) toward the Mediterranean. It is quite hilly and mountainous, with some mountains right at the water's edge and many more a few kilometers more further back up all the way into the Alps. Right now it is quite green.

The area is heavily populated with villas and villages stuck on steep hillsides pretty much wherever you look. Looking south it is not an inviting cross country area with its treed hillsides and "suburban" clutter. But the weather is a great draw to paraglider and hang glider pilots who want to get "air time." And the drive to is but a few hours for cross country flying in the sub Alps.

We were contacted by Don Carlsaw, an Oz Report contributor and supporter (thanks so much for your generous support), who invited us to join him and other locals for dinner on Saturday night. Don said that we almost snuck in and out of Grasse without saying hello. Don, a British expat, lives just up from our farm stay flat in .

In 2001, Don <<email>> wrote to me:

Our hang gliding club here in the south of France is the Club-des-Jeunes de Bar-sur-Loup. For some pictures of the flying here, visit the site of our Italo/Irish pilot Paolo 'Murfy' de Nicola http://paolo.denicola.free.fr.  Better still come and visit.

Paolo also came to dinner with us (and helped support the Oz Report) in a wonderful hole-in-the-wall restaurant a walk up the stairs from Don's place, (Jean-Charles Ballembois was also there, but we had missed seeing him earlier in Gourdon, where he runs a glass shop). But before we went out to dinner we stopped by Bruce Goldsmith and his wife Arna's place further up the hill (that's all there are here, hills).

The last time we mentioned Bruce here in the Oz Report he was winning the Paragliding World Championships in at Godfrey's place. It turns out later that he had a bit of an accident landing in (on the Canary islands), running smack dab into a lamp post turning from his base leg onto his final. He got a little lower than he expected in the tight LZ. Wrapping a riser around the post he twirled in breaking some parts of the vertebrae in his back. He's walking around just fine but working at redeveloping the muscles in his lower back.

Bruce said that his only plan for competition this summer is the British Nationals in . Bruce has been living in this area (because of the year round flying) for the last ten years.

Don has been living in Southern France for years, anything to get out of England, he says. He has four hang gliders in his garage, only one less than twenty five years old. The local club apparently has 150 hang gliders stored in its garage, with about only five pilots to fly them. Both hang gliding and paragliding are on the decline in this area.

Thanks to Don, Paolo, and Bruce for cluing us in on Southern France.