After many late nights, and a long day being the photographer at my best friends wedding, I finally got into the car at 11pm on Saturday, to drive through the night.

It’s an easy drive up the N1 which I usually enjoy, but being so tired I had to (eventually even the cans of RedBull didn’t help any more and I had to pass over to my co-driver, the cameraman Darren. We’ve got a real dog of a bakkie which sometimes manages to drive faster than 100km/h, and needs to be filled up with petrol every 350km!

On the way there was evidence of the unseasonal storms which have lashed the Cape province. There’s lots of standing water, which is a concern for me. Paragliding relies on thermals, and thermals need a warm ground surface. When there’s too much water on the ground, it stays cool due to the cooling effect of evaporation. While the water is being . It also means that the cloudbase will be low, because moist air condenses sooner, and so we have a ceiling beyond which we cannot legally fly. Paragliders must operate in Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC) which means clear of cloud and in sight of the ground. Occasionally you can fly higher than the cloudbase in thermals which have released from drier sources, but on the most part the cloudbase is the ceiling.

If you have a low ceiling, you can’t cover as much distance during your glide, and so you must find thermals more often to remain aloft. You also have to remain closer to the ground for longer, and that’s the risky area for flying, with more turbulence and greater risk of an unplanned landing.

So we’ll be hoping the ground will dry out quickly.