Judith's blog

Geoff writes: after all the events of the last week, an excellent day. It was both the day of the Long Mynd Soaring Club social, the Big Bash; and a round of the British Clubs Challenge, an inter club competition.

The PG part of the comp was at Corndon, the HG at the Malverns. Great sky at Corndon, but strongish wind. In the end, most people flew and many got away, with the best distance being around 45k, I think, by Dave Thomas. Judith and I didn’t fly, partly because we both hate the combination of strong wind and thermals; partly because it was our first day at Corndon since Sunday. However, everyone who did fly did so without incident, apart from one tree landing, and one person who got dragged onto a barbed wire fence. No injuries though, apart from to the gliders. So it was a good day for the comp. Not sure which club won at this stage.

The evening was the Bash at the Powis Arms, the event Judith and Michaela have been preparing for ages. Around 70 people turned up, which was excellent. Food, drink, prizes, music. Prize winners included Kai Coleman and Jason Smith (longest XC from Mynd site, highest placed National League pilot, PG and HG respectively), Ellie Hoskins (best new PG pilot), Andrew Donnison (weather guru and coach of the year), Richard Chaffe (unsung hero award), Judith (most improved PG pilot, highest placed female league pilot, from the Mynd, outstanding contribution to the club) and me (highest placed PG league newcomer, bent metal trophy). A full list of award winners will be on the Mynd forum.

I’m probably a bit biased, but I thought it was a really good night out, and an excellent event all round.

See photos of the flying today.

See Paul’s photos of flying today.

See Paul’s photos of tonight.

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Who stole the sunshine?

It was overcast today, but worse than predicted, so we canned the planned hang gliding and went to Santa Brigida instead. It was breezy there and we had a nice boat about with lots of other people there. A few weak thermals managed to slip through the gloom and there was ridge lift too. When the wind suddenly got stronger Geoff bottom landed and I drove down to do some ground handling. Need to work on those forward launches before Annecy!

We packed up at 5pm and headed to Olot for the carnival. It’s always a week later than elsewhere, but it being the last one in this area, they like to put on a bit of a show. Best floats this year were the King Kong float, which had a huge articulated gorilla, which could crouch down, beat his chest and pick up Jane, who would then scream ‘No, no!’. All controlled with hydraulics. Very impressive. The other highlight was the massive bear from The Golden Compass. All the floats have dancers (sometimes more than 120 people) doing routines. The Thriller float had a fake Michael Jackson (in red leather suit and white socks) doing the whole Thriller routine with an entourage of zombies.

The funniest float was the drunken Scots. Not only were they partial to showing off their bums, but their dance routine looked like the entire population of Inverness on acid.

See photos of today.

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It was a beautiful hot day, but unfortunately there was also a strong north wind. We debated whether to go to Puig d’Afrou, but decided to just try Santa Brigida instead. It was over the back there and gusty, so we had a picnic and read our books in the sun. It was probably flyable later at Puig d’Afrou, but by 5pm, we were lazy from the sun and couldn’t be bothered with the drive. Instead, we set off for the main fiesta of the year in Girona. We originally thought this was next week, but Nils our street performer/hang gliding buddy confirmed otherwise. We got there just in time to miss his first show, but saw the next one. We’ve seen it 4 times before, but it’s such a great show it’s worth seeing again and again. The finale of the show is Nils on a 3 meter unicylce juggling knives or fire.

We hung out at the fair for a while and looked at stalls waiting for the correfoc to start. Correfoc means running with fire in Catalan, and that’s a bit of a misnomer. The streets are so narrow you don’t run anywhere – more skip, dance and generally try not to get singed is a more accurate description. You go dressed for a correfoc in old clothes, and most essentially a hat or hoodie, if you don’t want your hair to catch fire.

A correfoc is basically a procession of drummers, the general public and a load of guys (and gals) dressed as devils and dragons who have fireworks on sticks which they light and swing over your head. At other correfocs we’ve been to you dance in a great huddle with the devils and the closer you are to them the less likely you are to get burned. Not in Girona. They chased us with fireworks held to the ground so you had to do a kind of skipping dance to avoid getting you socks burned, whilst above your head sparks were flying. All this takes place in streets too narrow for cars to pass through them and there are hundreds of people. The noise, smoke, bangs and sparks are amazing. It’s completely anarchic. I was squealing with delight most of the time.

See photos of today.

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We spent the day at Farmer Phil’s Festival. It was howling all day and it started raining from mid-afternoon. It was also freezing cold. By the evening I was wearing 5 layers, including two fleeces and my skiing jacket. In fact, I wore more clothes than I usually do skiing, and it’s August!

We finally managed to find the acoustic tent this afternoon and saw a couple of great singers, but the highlight of the day was the Bob Marley tribute band. Despite the pouring rain they got everyone bopping (or was that just everyone trying to keep warm?).

By late afternoon the place had turned into a mudbath and cars were being towed out by tractor. The field was getting more and more slippery and people were starting to do Glastonbury-style mud bathing.

I learned a valuable lesson tonight… don’t try doing a jig in wellies on uneven ground when you’ve had a few. I got away with it, but only just!

See photos of today.

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Geoff: Ever since I realised I had a chance of winning the League for the best pilot with a 1/2 glider (my Niviuk Hook) and so started putting my flights in the League, our flying and decision making has fallen apart. Today was no exception.

All week the forecast for Friday was that it would be the only good day of the week, and would be SSW. That is a lousy direction for here, but good in the Peaks, with Eyam Edge being an excellent XC site, and our intention was to go there. Come Friday morning, and we began to get different forecasts – first, it was actually west at the Long Mynd; and second, Ali, our helicopter flying friend from RAF Shawbury said that their met person was forecasting WSW all day – a great direction for the Long Mynd. So, we duly went up the Long Mynd, which was bang on. (We had another reason too for staying here; we had tickets for a music festival close by, which Judith will write about below). I launched reasonably early, just after James, and as soon as I was in the air it seemed very southerly. I got to about 500′ ATO, tracking along the ridge, almost parallel to it. The wind had abruptly switched to SSW. No-one else got off, those in the air landed, James got away to do about 8k! Phil Bibby launched (in the SSW) and headed into the valley, but got nothing. We took his car down, and decided to go to Clatter (SW) along with a few others who had been on the Long Mynd.

At Clatter, it was on and flyable. People launched, and began to get up. I blew one launch, and got the glider very tangled in the thorns that are there. The wind was picking up and I couldn’t untangle it there, so I carried back a little, out of wind. By the time I untangled it, it was too strong to launch.

Those in the air had a reasonable flight, but all landed as the wind picked up. Judith went over the back first – she thermalled over the back and then couldn’t get back to the front, so had to go with it – and landed, going backwards, for 8km. Wayne a little later did exactly the same, for 4 or 5km. Another pilot went XC, but along the ridge rather than over the back; not sure where he got to.

So from our point of view for XC it was a lousy day.

And in the Peaks, the best flight was by Jean-Luc, 128k to Bridlington, with others flying shorter distances. Andy Wallace did just over 80km.

SSW/SW is a poor direction here. Clatter is a potentially good XC site, but it does get blown out easily, and that was the problem today. In general, in such conditions, it is far better to go to the Peaks, even if it is a 200 mile round trip for us; the other advantage of the Peaks is that if the wind does change slightly, switching sites is very easy since they are all so close together. And though usually the Peaks is windier than round here (though not this year) that really doesn’t apply to sites in Wales, like Clatter and Elan Valley, which do get blown out quickly.

So next time, we drive! And two lessons from today:

a) At Clatter, it was a very short window, and the lesson is to get in the air as soon as it is flyable, don’t take too long to set up!

b) Even the RAF met officer gets it wrong!

Judith’s comments: Another mistake we made was not to pay attention enough to the occluded front which came through. All week I predicted that today would be an early day, as the wind would pick up in the afternoon. We should never have gone to a site where the wind would change from, rather than change to. We should have gone to a SW site and waited till the wind was right, not go to a site where there would only be a short window before it went off. Further north, they got the benefit of surfing the front of the front, whilst we had the high stuff from the word go. Next time…

In the evening we went to Farmer Phil’s festival (“Geddon moi land!”). Great bash. Michaela and I got new funky wellies especially for the occasion. We got there in time to see the end of Chumbawamba’s set, but they didn’t play Tubthumping, much to the consternation of the crowd. Wayne’s taken up celebrity stalking and got his picture taken with them. Next came Hazel O’Conner. She did a set only accompanied by a harp and she was fantastic. Wayne stalked her backstage for more snaps. He needs to get out more!

We had a great evening, listening to the bands, looking at the stalls and watching fire juggling. Roll on tomorrow for day two!

See photos of today.

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Rain, rain, rain. We did house jobs and stripped Geoff’s HG down.

The LMSC demo day was rained off, but the BBQ still on, although it was moved indoors due to the inclement weather. It was a good turnout and a good craic. The glider club guys made us very welcome.

Forecast for next week is rubbish. We’d be going back to Spain if we were not having work done on the house.

See photos of today.

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Rain in the morning, but then it cleared up. It was probably flyable for hang gliders, although very windy. We went to do some archery and had a really good session. There is a temporary airspace restriction due to the Fairford air tattoo, which this year affects the Long Mynd sites. At 2.05pm, we saw the first jets crossing the Church Stretton valley. These were followed by several more groups, some flying over the Lawley and Caer Caradoc. Impressive, but you wouldn’t want to be in the air at the time.

In the evening I went to Liverpool with Michaela to see Counting Crows. It was fantastic. Brilliant birthday present, thanks Mich!

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