May 2009
Monthly Archive
Sunday, 3rd May 2009
Judith 04 May 2009 | : Miscellaneous activities
We woke up to a glorious morning, just shame it was so windy. We had breakfast in the garden with Sean and Dave and then Brian came along, so it was a very sociable day. Lunch time we went to Clun for the Green Man festival. It was very cute (i.e. tiny). One food stall, one lemonade stall, some very half-hearted battle reenactment (two people only, so strictly speaking, a fight reenactment) and a jazz band, which was improved when the Bishop’s Castle samba band decided to jam along. It took all of 5 minutes to walk around, so we listened to the bands for a while and then went home to cut the grass and do some work.
The wind did drop off enough for a couple of hang gliders to fly in the evening, but it rained at 6.30pm and Geoff couldn’t be bothered to rig the glider at 7pm for a bit of a hop.
Saturday, 2nd May 2009
Geoff writes: a much anticipated day today, with light westerlies forecast, and many people making the trek down to the Long Mynd, including a Scottish contingent (Dave and Sean). It start off a bit up and down – soarable, but with sink cycles. I flew and slope landed three or four times, as did Judith. One small gaggle got away early on. Eventually, the clouds got better, and Judith and I and a few others climbed out. Base was just over 5000′. Judith left slightly before me, I stayed on the front to get a little higher, and left a few minutes after her. Going on a glide to a cloud, I saw Judith quite low at Caer Caradoc, but then she began to thermal so I switched my direction and went over to her. We both climbed up again, slowly, and were joined by Martin Knight. Eventually going on a glide again, Judith led the way to the quarry on Wenlock Edge, which gave us a very strong thermal indeed – one of the strongest I’ve had here in a while. We all had to big ears to avoid the cloud.
From there, the three of us took slightly different tracks, got bits of thermals, but the sky was very cloudy, though there was sun on the ground in the far distance. In the end, all of us went down separately round about Telford, for about 34k. A great retrieve from Ali got us back to the Long Mynd. I flew again, but it was strong wind, and I quickly landed. We packed up and went home – being joined by the Scots who are camping in our garden overnight.
Overall, a really nice day.
As usual, tracklogs on the XC page.
Friday, 1st May 2009
Judith 01 May 2009 | : Archery
We’re getting very bored with the weather. Windy today, so we went to do archery, but we only managed an hour before the rain came in. Instead I edited the podacst on our SIV course. It features Pat Dower and Geoff and is online now. We’re quite hopeful that it might actually be flyable tomorrow.