Judith's blog

Geoff writes: a fun and varied day, starting with lots of work for the various online conferences we are in the middle of organising. Then in the afternoon, we realised it was flyable, and loaded up the van with my hang glider and the paragliders, and the archery stuff. Drove to the Long Mynd, decided it was very wavy, and not really an XC day, so went to do some shooting – first time for a couple of weeks, and we need the practise. Then drove back over the Long Mynd and had a nice evening flight, going to both ends of the ridge in light wave. Great views, you could see the Malverns.

And finally, off to the Powis Arms in Lydbury North to speak to the landlord, Gerry, about various events the Long Mynd Soaring Club are running there. He is incredibly helpful, and very flyer-friendly!

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Geoff had been having horrendous toothache for a week and his misery was finally ended this morning, when the dentist whipped the offending molar out. He wasn’t feeling too great afterwards and we decided to go to Gloucestershire to visit his family. A quick bit of archery on the way had us arriving in time for one of Liz’s delicious dinners.

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It was actually nice enough to be out and about, so we went to do archery. It was pretty windy so where the arrows landed was a bit of a lottery, but that made it quite amusing.
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Geoff writes: is this really August? Cool, windy, OK, at least it didn’t rain today.

We moved to the Mynd area three years ago, convinced it was generally a better area for flying than the Peak District. I remember many days in the Peaks, wishing we were at the Mynd, because it was less windy, better flying, better for XC…  but ever since we moved here, it has been consistently better in the Peaks! We are plagued here by westerlies with southerly components, a poor direction. And it is very rarely WNW or NW, a much better direction for here. To be honest, we’d move back to the Peak District, except for the absolute certainty it would be crap back there once we moved back, and epic down here. And Andy Wallis keeps trying to convince me we are better off here (but that’s just because he wants somewhere to stay when he comes down!).

Anyway, crap here today, but crap in the Peaks too (they flew, but no XCs), which makes me feel better. We had considered driving up there today, but decided it would be one or more of too windy, too cloudy, or a bad direction (give the airspace) so we stayed here. The only real option was Clatter, and probably had we gone early it might have been OK, but we thought it would blow out quickly. In the end, we stayed at home and worked, then went to do some archery, so it wasn’t a complete waste of a day. On the way, we drove past the Mynd launch, and saw one forlorn French hang glider pilot (in completely the wrong place) who has been in this area for nine days, and not yet flown. Still, he’s back to France on Sunday. Must be a relief for him.

And tomorrow, we’re off the the Blorenge Bash. Even if it’s not flyable, we’ll meet lots of old friends, including Nicky over from Spain, and also meet people we’ve known only online before, like Tom Payne (blog star). Should be fun, I’m looking forward to it.

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Geoff has requested that I make this posting interesting as even he’s bored with reading the blog. OK, here goes…

We woke up to a mad motorcycle courier doing wheelies on the front lawn, then we won a small fortune on the lottery, but decided to give it all to a recluse who lives in a cave in Bromsgrove. Just for a laugh we did naked pogo stick jumping and then went to a pagan wedding dressed entirely in yellow. The cake wasn’t very nice and the music was crap.

In the real world, the front didn’t clear here until 2pm. Then there was no wind, then too much wind and too south. We did archery not very successfully and then tried but failed to fly. Music night at the Bridges was good and nice to see our friends again after 9 days of hibernation.

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Geoff writes: a fairly messed up day for us. Light NW promised, going westerly later the day. Really, we wanted to go to Llangollen, but were very late out because we were being interviewed by the BHPA about the accident at the weekend. By the time this was done it was early afternoon, and on (sort of) at the Mynd, but very light winds and very cloudy. Almost no thermals coming through. At one point Jay and Richard did launch, got up in a very rough thermal, with lots of northerly drift, lost it, and landed. And then it went NE. And that was the end of the day for us. Though the sky did get a bit better. We finally gave up and went and did some archery.

We were a bit pushed for time too, because we had an LMSC committee meeting in the evening, which had a lot to discuss, and which we could not possibly miss. A full turnout, and a very productive meeting.

So, the flying was rubbish at the Mynd; poor in the Peaks where it was cloudy; nice soaring but no XC at Llangollen. In fact, no XCs posted anywhere in the country at the time of writing this, Friday morning.

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Geoff writes: another day of poor weather. At least the rain held off till late afternoon, so we got some archery in. Yesterday, we did consider heading south east, where the forecast was better, but in the end it seemed too far to go. Though Mark Watts did manage 122k from Caburn. But that’s a long drive for us, to a site we’ve never flown before.

But tomorrow is looking a little better now, with the front clearing at some point in the afternoon. Precisely when it clears will make the difference between a possible XC day from the Long Mynd, or just some evening soaring. Here’s hoping….

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