You Tried, Now Back To Your Swamp!

Sometimes it’s frustrating. The days are shorter and there are few hours of light. The good (suitable, never mind ‘good’) KAP targets are scarce and far from home. The weather is bleak and wet and cold. So we tend to fall back to our, shall we say, ‘regular’ places, where we can be sure that the kite will fly – but then another problem arises: we bring back another hundred photos of a place we’ve shot thousand of times before, we don’t have any new kite aerial photos of new juicy targets – and we bore our fans.

But, truth be told – most places are different every time we visit! 🙂

We tried, we promise. We went to a brand new and potentially fantastic KAP target to check out the scene – but sadly found that the turbulent, gusty wind would take the kite into some hungry trees, and If we somehow missed those trees, it would end on a high-voltage power line. We like KAP, but not that much.

Then we went to yet another new place, but the wind direction was all wrong and it wouldn’t be possible to even launch the kite. So in the end we went to one of our regulars, a place that is all in all a very nice KAP target even though the winds there are always tricky – in over 10 visits we had like 3 successful KAP sessions.

It’s a swamp.

The northern part of Radensko polje landscape park is an enchanting, mysterious place. But since it’s basically a deep north-south valley, the winds above it are a pain in the ass – the western one in particular.

So we saw things we shouldn’t. Like a camera catching its own ride as The Original Blue rokkaku pulled like hell but couldn’t (didn’t want to?) rise:

Kites were doing all kinds of shenanigans, mainly threatening to crash into each other; the inflatable Cloude was so naughty Ivor soon called it quits after it almost ensnared him twice (the second time trying to pull him right into the swamp) – and spent the time untangling the yet-again tangled Cloude’s lines.

It was late, the light wasn’t at its best anymore, but we got a couple of nice photos. Like this estavelle – a funny Karst phenomenon that is a spring when the waters are coming in, and a sinkhole when they are receding – one of the largest of its kind, called Mihovka.

The village of Zagradec was bathing in the late November sun …

While the sinkholes were leading the waters of Podlomščica and Dobravka streams into the dark underground.

We might’ve felt underwhelmed (the hour was late, the winds were terrible, the heights attained below expectations), but Radensko polje is beautiful. It was fun to fly kites over it again, and the photos are cool.

We will be back – but hopefully after we get to shoot some new places 🙂

Kite aerial photos shot with Insta360 cameras on Cindy delta and on The Original Blue rokkaku, both made by master kiter Janez of Dr.Agon kites.