This morning August 5th 2011 we heard that our lovely Nonnie, Countess Veronica Balinska Ward Smith stopped breathing and slipped away to rejoin the Angels. My thoughts and prayers are with Phoebe, JJ and Smiffy at this incredibly sad moment.

Nonnie is sleeping most of the time now as the brain tumor is taking its final toll. Thoughts, prayers and blessings, love and light.... nothing can be said to mitigate this tragic situation.... it has been a priveledge to know her, she is a beautiful, wonderful woman and has been an exemlplary mother to JJ and Phoebe. Sleep in peace Nonnie, you have made the world a better place, and illuminated it with your smiles.

Thanks to Emma in NZ we have this: Hope it works for you.... I think we actually WON the public vote from the show, certainly had a heap of great comments and feeback. Enjoy!

Very positive response from heaps and heaps of people to the TV shows this week, there is a public online poll in which we currently have 62% of votes cast. Wow!

The tipis have a load of people in tonight all having a good time apparently, but flying has been off the menu for some time with strong winds for ages..

My voice mail jammed up before the show ended yesterday afternoon! More email enquiries than you can shake a stick at! Show was pretty sympathetically edited and I think we squeaked by OK. The flying shots helped a lot!

The Channel 4 show '4 in a Bed' features Butterfly Paragliding all this week in the 5pm slot!

It was a load of fun to make the programmes, about two weeks shooting in all. I learnt a lot about B/B which can only be a good thing as we are doing more of it now, however it was mostly an attempt on my part to get some exposure for the paragliding centre. Also learnt loads about programme making and techniques.

Watch it if you can and have a laugh at me trying to be a professional b/b host! I think the other proprietors had a pretty good time here, but it was probably a little outside their normal range of activities and interests......

The film crews are much more likely to be back this year for some flying and glamping

I'd like to copy the shows down onto dvd or a websitebut not really tecno enough.....

....Second week of May was STONKING GOOD flying here on our Isle of Wight sites.

We had our friends from Switzerland, Flugshule Solothurn over here. Forget exotic overseas flying locations, they are coming to us now! Apparently Wight is the new Black! Photos going up on facebook already, too many good ones for here. Eight gliders up over Arreton one day, cloud surfing along Chale bay the next, Nova and Niviuk testival going on alongside mountain/ridge conversion training courses and some fine tandem training too. Of course there were some interesting moments and arrivals but everybody ended up smiling and having a great experience in the end.

Stefan is a great guy with loads of experience and a great team. They were unfailingly cheerful and enthusiastic, their only complaint was the Freshwater hotel, next time they will be staying a bit closer to us, either here, or, if it is another large cohort, at the Wight Mouse.

Testing the Nova Mentor 2 in these conditions was an absolute pleasure. I thought the large one was filled with helium at times. It seems just like a friendly normal glider out of the bag (albeit with the strimmer line leading edge shapers and subtle detailing on the slick riser and line sets), lean back and it wafts up overhead in a helpful and undramatic fashion. Take a look at the layout and it is all familiar, not extreme in the aspect ratio department, no eccentric line arrangements, controls feel good...... it is a polished and user friendly piece of kit.

Take off, and it flies, so far so good, not unexpected but reassuring none the less!

Start to check it out in the air and it still doesn't spring any suprises; pitch, roll, assymetrics, big ears, point of stall, coordination and so on all feels really nice. So I am just tooling around above the big bowl at Blackgang and I notice I am getting pretty high. Maybe there is a bit more wind than I think, better push forward... no problem; its pretty slippery and quick but for some reason I am still getting higher. OK, a bit of speed bar... ruddy thing keeps on climbing.. full bar then, positively whipping along now and still not going down!

Now I am out above the recreation ground cliffs and still in orbit, this wing must be full of helium! I have two tandem passengers waiting on the take off way below so after a lot of deliberation/vascillation I decide I really do have to go down. Far out over the sea the spiral begins, round and round and round and round and round and round and.... This has been going on a long time, my neck is hurting and I am getting a bit dizzwoozy so I come out of it. No drama. Still way way above the other wing flying though. Another spiral... still up way too high... big assymetric and sideslip down to join Josh and finally land on the Terrace take off. Clara is jumping up and down like a petite tramolinemoiselle, having lost count of the revolutions in the first spiral.

Josh had a similar revelatory experience with the small Mentor 2 and when Stefan and I had a gentle tip to tip cruise after work on the large Niviuk Peak1and large Mentor 2 there was precious little in it, by the time we had pushed on to Whale Chine and were still tip to tip we decided it was time to light the barbecue so scooted back to take off.

Other wings checked out over the period were from Niviuk and I must say they have an impressive lineup. The awesome Peak just dominates the sky like a buzzard over kestrels, coyotes are easy to fly in a typically entry level way, while the Hook and Artic 2 were very 21st entury wings

Our free flying buddy Leo was last in the air that day and twisted an ankle on poorly judged arrival, this has resulted in him extending his visit a bit.....

Huge day today on One Tree field, wind quite north and an inversion about 200 feet above the hill, however managed to get some tandem flights in and spent five or six hours flying .

Exhausting day but a welcome change from having to tell dozens of Easter weekend enquirers "sorry no wind for flying"

Josh did some very nice flying earlier on, then loads of running around site managing and ground control.

There should be some pictures and video uploaded soon, from some of the fancy cameras on site today, watch this space.

It has been beautiful lately, we are so lucky. Check these pix and get on over here....

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150226853670792.358099.133436040791&l=54ca9d973f

Interesting times, lots going on in the outer world, inner world and the interpersonal world, for lots of people. Some of it is quite heavy, but hey, that is what some of life is really (according to the philosophy on the back of this matchbox) and we have a duty to enjoy it as much as possible. if we dont, who and when will anybody?

The boys had a super light party, we've had great flights, Josh and Jolanda are back. Clara and Amy are helping out, The sun is shining, Rolls is playing smooth piano now, Jack on guitar.... its all good!

Lovely high flight over Blackgang yesterday, water all round the island and a thirty second spiral down at the end. Happy Alec, passenger and photographer.

Try this link to the spiral, but it maight take a while to download....

Josh is back from cross country adventures in New Zealand, Jolanda is back from cross cultural adventures in Holland and Butterfly Dave is back from his reality TV adventure. Channel 4, four in a bed, due for screening in June.

We were lucky with the weather for the BBQ but sadly it was tooo light for tandem flying.

Francis was flying around on a paramotor taking aerial shotsand Wayne and Melvin did well to make a flight each on our training slope overlooking Blackgang.

Lorenzo got his EP today. Lovely weekend of training and flying on the island. Limerstone yesterday, St Cats today.

Nicely flyable today, C4 TVcrew arrives tommorrow for filming, ho hum, never mind!

Maybe the weather will hold! It was lovely today, peachy perfect

Tipis are up in the grounds!

How cool is that.

Check out the accommodation page for more info and pix. We are due to have some tv exposure later on this year too, C4 prime time,fingers crossed for the weather!

Please send LOVE and LIGHT to Noni, Smiffy Phoebe and JJ and in NZ, they are having a very intense time indeed at the moment....

The item on Trip Advisor is up and would benefit from some editing if you have a moment to spare.....

So Josh is visiting with Smithy now, hes got his Niveuk Hook and a lovely harness all ready to go searching for antipodean cloud streets and airsmiles.

Smith has had the Swift in the air recently and managed to land again without breaking anything at all apparently. Wonderful.

Jolanda is off to Germany and Holland for a while, Clara is having a camping holiday in Wales and I have been doing more things around the house. We now have three guest bedrooms and the first tipi is going up in March.

There is a chance we could get some exposure on Channel 4 this year which would be nice, but in the meantime we need to do a bit of viral marketing to survive the winter.
If you would be so kind as to send in a review or feedback to some websites like trip advisor I would be most appreciative.

Tara has had a wonderful baby, Tabithaa and both doing well

Our faithful and delightful cat Scrunchy has passed away after a long happy life and a short illness. She is sadly missed

Paul and Kay dropped in from Brizzie this afternoon with tales of Phil and H, gyro-aviaton and a wonderful life in sunny rainy Oz. i am looking forward to visiting them out there, it sounds fabulous.

Jack has had an interview with Brit School in Croydon , we are waiting to hear...

You might hear a charming French girl answer our phone in future, it is Clara who will be doing some of the administration. Welcome to the team Clara.

We had a bit of flying yesterday and I had a marvellous walk on the beach and up the cliffs, great to escapre the office for a while, roll on Summertime. Cant wait.

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