Carpentras, sporting and stormy.

Saturday 23 July, midday

The stormy weather certainly turned up. We were woken early by a fine, rather unwelcoming rain. The situation forced us to wait for the low cloud to clear, while preventing the instability over the high ground from building too much during the day. The morning organisation briefing very quickly decided to cancel the evening stage at Fayence, in an area under orange alert. We would also have had the greatest difficulty leaving Fayence tomorrow, Sunday. It is always heartbreaking to tell the clubs that welcome us that we will not be coming. The aerodrome manager (AAPCA) and the microlight club Hydroaeroconcept had arranged an orchestra and a great many guests. They know the weather constraints as well as we do and we thank them.

Take-offs began at about 10am in an entirely normal way. But the deterioration of the storm front forced some to turn back. Take-offs were halted for nearly an hour. Half of the participants therefore set off again at about 1pm. What struck us in flight was, first of all, the lines of traffic jams of July holidaymakers on the Autoroute du Soleil. Our ground teams (catering, baggage, fuel, logistics, recovery, mechanical assistance) deserve great credit, and some took almost 6 hours to drive from Valence to Carpentras.

The region is beautiful and almost all the sites are universally familiar: from Avignon to Mont Ventoux, from Vaison-la-Romaine to Beaumes-de-Venise. The light was milky, however, and the strong wind pushing us almost doubled in strength during the flight. After crossing the Drôme near Crest, we nevertheless took the time to fly over the Château of Madame de Sévigné at Grignan, where she wrote her famous correspondence. The region is full of festivals and open-air venues that invite you to poke around between nature, architecture and culture, but the Tour ULM is not a festival, although… The massif we were following on our left was caught in a mass in which we could sense more and more the violence of the activity.

Our pass over the Roman theatre of Vaison-La-Romaine and along the Dentelles de Montmirail took place in a very impressive, majestic and violent stormy setting: lightning bolts all around, heavy thundery downpours. Carpentras airfield was completely inaccessible for a long time. Several machines therefore made precautionary landings at neighbouring airfields: Avignon, Orange, Valréas, and two machines landed in fields for safety. A thunderstorm is a weather phenomenon whose limits are never really well known. A good Breton depression stirs things up, brings rain and wind, but does not deceive, because its build-up is predictable. A thunderstorm has a sly and sudden violence. We saw a lightning bolt strike right ahead of us, the point of impact was visible.

In short, the first stage of the tour, which was meant to be an intermediate one and has become final, will serve as our haven of peace after a very sporting warm-up. The vegetation is dry, and a local, amazed by our machines, nevertheless complained that the storm does not bring enough rain, as it is not enough for the truffle, whose daily production has fallen from 1300 kg to 300 kg in 20 years. We pitch our tents in the hard ground, emptied of its truffles.

We leave for Montpellier tomorrow with a stop at Meyrargues.

Sébastien Perrot

(Diogène GPS beacon)

The morning organisation briefing

A gyroplane that stands out

France 3 stayed all morning

Let the stories begin...

Traffic jam on the Autoroute du Soleil

The town of Crest and the Drôme

The Château of Madame de Sévigné at Grignan

The theatre of Vaison-La-Romaine

The storm over the Dentelles de Montmirail

Carpentras airfield is underneath

A sporting and wet landing, well done to the pilot, the faithful Alain Catalan!