Local Focus: Freedom and hitchhiking

The weather determines when the Hawke's Bay Paragliding and Hang Gliding Club meets.

For 30 years they have been launching from Havelock North's Te Mata Peak, to the gasps of spectators.

Some pilots hang around the peak, but many travel as far away as Wairarapa if they can find thermal currents to keep them soaring.

From a site north of Napier specialist cross-country pilot Shaun Gilbert has flown to Wairoa. On Saturday he flew to Woodville from Te Mata Peak and, as always, packed up his wing and hitchhiked home.

"People in the back country are really neat," he said.

"The farmers are usually a bit sceptical at first about who this funny person is on their property, or walking out of their property.

"Once they realise what you've done most of them fall over backwards and say 'look my neighbour is going into town' or 'the school bus is going past' or 'the milkman is going past' or 'I'll just give my neighbour a call'. People are really fantastic in the country, they really are."

Fellow clubmember and photographer Tim Whittaker says flying is about relaxation, not adrenaline.

"It is truly the closest thing to flying like a hawk or an eagle," he said.

"We often look on the ground to see if we can find any possible areas where a thermal might start from. These include a paddock where a farmer might be ploughing and that tractor will trigger the release of the thermal. You know you're in it because it will smell of a ploughed paddock. We might be three or four thousand feet high and we'll smell the paddock and the same on riverbeds – we'll smell the river – so you know exactly where the thermal is from."

For Tim flying is "just the ultimate in freedom".

"It is the most pleasurable thing and I love it. I'll never stop it – I'm 52 now and I've been flying for 26 years and I'll just keep it."

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