Judith's blog

Personally, I thought today would be a write-off as it would be too windy on the Long Mynd. As we woke up we could already see shadows dancing on the curtains, so the trees were blowing. Others’ had it dropping off mid-afternoon, so I suppose it just depends on what forecast you trust. Unfortunately for us, it lulled for about 20 minutes at 10.25am, and three people started flying paragliders, and the sky just looked fantastic, so we were lured up the hill – where it was howling. The two remaining PGs duly landed going slightly backwards and after that it was generally just hang gliders and Glyn. He does like a bit of the rough stuff…

Loads of people had turned up and were waiting it out, but by 3pm, I had got hungry, so went home for some sandwiches, while Geoff rigged the hang glider. He had a pleasant, if a little bouncy, flight. By 4.30pm, the clouds were decaying upwind and the chances of going XC were getting less and less likely. It was still windy and I didn’t want to waste more of the day waiting for the wind to drop, so we packed up the glider and headed to Stretton to do archery.

Yesterday I asked Anne to have a look at my release and she gave me some exercises to do which really helped, but today Tom had a good look at my shooting. I have been a little listless with my archery lately and Geoff has been asking if I still enjoy it. I seem to want to spend more time in the club house drinking tea than shooting. This was because I was getting progressively worse, while others around me have been improving enormously. I thought I had let my arm muscles really go over the winter, since I have a lot of trouble getting to full draw; I have taken to nodding (pushing my face towards the string, rather than pulling it fully to my chin), and I often pull a muscle in my shoulder and have to give up because it hurts. It has dented my confidence and therefore affected my enjoyment. So when Tom looked at my shooting he saw various flaws. Shooting with my eyes closed, I was trying and trying to pull the string back, and it wasn’t working. So we measured the poundage I am pulling. My bow should be 34 pounds, and we slackened off the limbs a while ago to reduce the poundage because I was having trouble pulling that. It is now set at 37 pounds, so 11 pounds more than I pulled last year, and significantly more than Geoff pulls. No wonder I can’t get the damn thing to full draw!

So we have some major tweaking to do to try to get the poundage down and the bow tuned. If we can’t get it to 30 – 32 pounds I need to sell the limbs and get others, so Sunday is the big tweak day. It’s a huge relief. I’m not completely useless, like I have started to think, but the equipment I have is wrong for me at the moment.

As we drove back home over the Long Mynd, there were gliders scattered all over the landing. It dropped enough for people to fly from 6pm and from the smiles on people’s faces, it looked like everyone had a nice time. Well done Melise for a great flight. She was grinning ear to ear when we saw her.

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Geoff writes: the forecast was for nice sunny weather, but windy, not even dropping off in the evening – and so it turned out. We decided to have an active day, after doing a bit of work in the morning.

Judith was in Church Stretton at 10am, and driving back home there was one PG flying, a visiting pilot, Richard, trying to get in a flight before they returned home (having been here three days and not flown at all). Whilst he was flying, the wind picked up, so he very sensibly turned and ran, landing at Marshbrook.

We loaded up the van with paragliders (just in case the forecast was wrong), the hang glider, and the archery stuff. We started off at the Acton Scott Working Farm Museum, somewhere we’ve been planning to go for ages, not least because Tom, from the Long Mynd Archers, works there as a farrier on Thursdays. It’s a nice place, well worth a visit, with plenty to see, and it was interesting to see Tom working as a blacksmith. We spent a few hours there, whilst the wind slowly continued to increase, but the sky was a really good XC sky. Since we thought it would stay windy into the evening, and I wasn’t fussed about an XC on the hang glider, we decided to go to archery – it’s usually a bit quieter in the day, and we can get more shooting in. Unfortunately, there were some people today who were incredibly slow retrieving their arrows (more chatting than walking!), and we can’t shoot whilst people are walking up the field for their arrows. So eventually, we got a bit frustrated, and the wind seemed to be dropping a bit anyway, so we packed up and went to fly.

As we arrived at launch at the Long Mynd it seemed relatively light, and we did consider gettitng the PGs out, but it soon started picking up again, so we rigged the hang glider, and I flew for 40 minutes or so, very pleasant, then landed. The wind was still increasing, and it was quite strong as we left, with wave bars forming to the west. No other PGs – apart from a speed wing – had flown since the one this morning, though some HGs had been around most of the day, and it was certainly flyable all day for them.

So a fun day, and just possibly, depending on which forecast you want to believe, it might be flyable for PGs tomorrow at the Long Mynd.

See photos of today.

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I have been saying to people all week that today would be the day, but of course the forecast had been getting progressively more dodgy as the day got closer. The original plan to go to Llangollen changed to the Peaks and by last night it was clear it would be too windy there. So this morning the forecasts were all over the place again, and largely contradicting each other.

My take was that it would be an early day, hopefully on the Long Mynd, before it became too windy and NW, and possibly over-developed. Wendy Windblows was giving WNW all morning, very light, so we set off up the hill at 10.45am. We got there and it was anywhere between NW and NE. This wasn’t a particular issue, just a matter of swapping location, but there were both cumulus and wave bars forming all around us.

After much debating and faffing, we decided that the wave was going to make going XC a little tricky, so we canned the day and went off to Bishops Castle to shop for some lunch. As we came out of the Co-op and opened the car doors, a dust devil ripped down the high street and filled our car with crap and then whizzed on down the hill. Obviously a very, very thermic day!

By the time we had finished lunch, the wave had completely disappeared and we seriously considered that we had made a mistake not going flying. I was still concerned about the forecast increasing wind, so we did a bit of gardening before finally deciding what to do with the day. As the afternoon progressed, the wind seemed to be picking up, so we wrote off the day and went to archery instead.

You could tell it was windy… shooting at 50 yards, we were having to compensate for the wind and to say we were hopeless would be an understatement. At one point we had to get the metal detector out because one of us missed the target and we couldn’t find the arrow anywhere. Luckily, it won’t shred the mower when the field gets groomed tomorrow.

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The forecast wasn’t great and we decided to save ourselves for the potentially good four days to come. Of course, the forecast was wrong as usual! Rather than going to Acton Scott working farm to see Tom, as we have been planning to every Thursday for weeks, we decided to go out flying instead. The sky got better and better, but there seemed no wind.

An orange Niviuk glider was making impressive attempts at getting up on the Long Mynd, but was struggling to get above launch height. He had to slope land several times and walk back up and then went down to the bottom after a heroic scratch. Turned out it was Ben Henson.

I hate days like these. It’s just a lottery whether you launch at the right time or not, especially when there are only a handful of people out. You sit there baking all day and think of all the useful things you could be doing, whilst sitting under a fantastic sky you can’t get up to. We’ve been there too many times before… So we stayed at home and did the garden and then watched the sky cloud over. We gave up on the idea of flying at 2.30pm and drove over the Long Mynd to do some archery, stopping to chat to the die-hard keen guys on the hill.

Archery was good. We did lots of checking and taking photos (a good way of looking to see if alignment between shoulders and elbows is right, etc.). We shot until a blister on my finger stopped play.

See photos of today.

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I really like flying, but hell, it was nice to have a day off.

I heard the rain in the night and there was no sun shining through the curtains to wake us up, so we had a nice lie in and then caught up with last week’s letters, emails, bills etc. All of life’s mundane stuff. By afternoon we were out on the archery field and having a really good session. I am getting used to my bow and am working on my accuracy, and I am pleased with the results.

In the evening my parents came back to see us on their way home from Ireland and took us out for a slap up curry.

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Geoff writes: we had hoped to go flying today, but the forecast wasn’t that brilliant this morning, showers throughout the day, so we canned it. We had second thoughts about lunchtime when we got a call from Mick at Llangollen saying it was sunny there, just waiting for some clouds to clear, so we set off. But there were big clouds on the way, so we called again. Mick still hadn’t flown at that point – he was waiting for the big black snow cloud to pass over. We decided that even if we did fly, we would be dodging showers, and not want to go XC given the sky we were under, so went home, loaded up the archery stuff, and set off for the archery field. On the way, the sky seemed to be improving, so we phoned Mick again …. this time he was waiting for a rain cloud to pass over.

So at this point we really gave up the idea of flying and went to archery – interrupted by rain, but Judith had a master class from another Geoff on how to make a string for a bow. We didn’t shoot much, but we did learn a lot.

Driving back, the weather was worse, lots of rain clouds in the distance – though probably later on, in the evening, it might have been flyable when the clouds cleared – actually, it was probably flyable on and off all day, just not a sky you would want to get high in, or go XC.

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Geoff writes: after a warm and sunny April, we’ve slipped into a cold, wet and windy May. Today we assembled some of the furniture we got from Ikea yesterday, and also went to do some shooting at the archery field.

We also spent a while watching the general elections results – always interesting to watch, though whoever you vote for the government gets in (as I happily sprayed on a lot of walls around the country when I was younger).

Tomorrow is the LMSC Big Bash – really looking forward to it, should be fun. There was a competition planned too on our sites, but at least for Saturday that is cancelled.

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