The Mondial Du Vent is one of the largest wind sports events in the world attracting some 150,000 spectators! The event is held annually in the South of France at a costal resort called Lecaute.
The main plan was to drive down to the event, some 1000 miles over 16 hours, but one thing after another made it almost impossible for us to hire a vehicle to take down to the event. After looking into it fond out that we could hire a car in Spain so we flew from Gatwick with all our buggy gear to Barcelona and picked up a hire car. Thanks to Sixt for allowing people as young as 18 to hire cars! After only 30 minutes of touching down we were on the highway and making our 150 mile journey to Leacute.
We arrived on the Friday mid morning and hooked up with some of the other Flexi riders who were also in town. Sadly there was light drizzle so no kiting was done! Friday evening we met up with Nicolas one of the French Flexifoil riders as we would be staying at his familes house for the week. That night we took it easy and settled into the house.
Day 2 - Saturday morning we made our buggies up and got all our gear sorted. The wind was nuts, a good 20-30 mph bang off shore and not very clean. We arrived at the beach and were also joined by the MBS & rest of Flexifoil team who had driven down! I put the 6.5 Blade IV up and after about 20 minutes that was enough. The wind was gusty and slung you around and it was not nice. I put up the 2.5 Blurr and went out and gave the racers a good run for there money!
Day 3 - Was possibly the best day of the whole event, we were greated by 20mph on shore winds aswell as warm temperatures. This was perfect for us to really put on a good to show what freestyle buggying was all about. Pulling off mega kite loops, big rotations, inverts, sidewinders. This all went down very well with all the spectators and fellow kiters.
Day 4 - This was the final day of the PKRA so we headed into town to watch the days events. At around lunch time we headed down to the buggy site and went out for a little session. We were joined by Flexifoil snowkiter, Matt Blanchard. This was a good 6.5 session which was well enjoyed, ripping up and down the beach was great fun. We put up the Blurr’s and travelling fully up the beach as far as you could possibly go!
Day 5 - The wind was nuts today again, and as the PKRA was over some of the PKRA riders came down to the beach to check out land kiting. I went out on the 4.0m Blade IV and pulling off some roations, big jumps, kite loops, and evan some sweet double kite loops. We got most of the PKRA riders onto the landing including all the female riders! That was something that certainly put a smile on the males faces.
That evening was the Stance party held in the town, this went on into the very early hours but was more than worth every minute of it.
Day 6 - This was a light wind day but was onshore, we chilled out for most of the day and took a chilled out session on the 8.5 Blade IV just cruising about and having fun. Travelling back the next day we headed back to the house and packed our gear ready to travel home.
That evening we had a BBQ & Small party at the house which was mega chilled out.
Day 7 - Day spent travelling back to the UK, we left the house at 7am and headed to Barcelona Airport. We got stuck in some pretty heavy rush hour traffic but made it to the airport with some spare time. We dropped the car off, headed to the terminal, checked in a flew back. I don’t remember much of the flight, I caught up on some much needed sleep!
Thanks to Flexifoil for making this trip possible - view website
Big thanks to Peter @ Mellow (Flexifoil Europe) for arranging the event and looking after us. - view website
Thanks to BA for allowing us to take our kite Gear on the flights.
Pictures will be online 30th April
