Judith's blog

Geoff writes: I didn’t feel particularly like flying today, though clearly it was going to be a pretty good day, good clouds, very thermic.  The obvious place to go was the Peaks – nil wind and SW here is a real pain, whereas in the Peaks, it usually means a pretty good day. But I couldn’t be bothered with the drive, a 200 mile round trip, just for one day, since tomorrow is likely to be SE, a poor direction in the Peaks – nice for flying, no good for XC because of airspace. So I decided to have a quiet day in, but Mark Leavesley then phoned saying it was a nice 15mph on the SE face at Corndon. If it had been any further, I wouldn’t have bothered, but Kai was also going, so I thought it worth the 15 minute trip out.

But it was predictably pretty poor. The wind was back to very light, and what there was, was SW rather than SE. There is a face on Corndon which sort of works in that direction, but today, in spite of the epic sky, it didn’t. Both Mark and Kai tried numerous times, but didn’t get up. In the end, I canned the day and left. Kai also left a bit later, but Mark did, eventually, get up and have a good day.

I’ve not looked at the league results yet, but I’ll be amazed if there aren’t some really good XCs from the Peaks. […and just heard from Andy Wallis, who did 130km High Wheeldon to Cleethorpes].

I’ll be out tomorrow though….

[Judith not feeling too good in France, so probably no comp update today].

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It was far too windy from the outset to consider flying, so the organisation gave us the day off. We went to a Via Ferrata about 40 minutes away. Ten of us went and after a short walk in we climbed a number of sheer vertical faces. We did three traverses. The first was a himalayan bridge, the second an monkey bridge and the third a hundred meter zip slide. The pictures say it all, really.

See photos of today.

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Geoff writes: after a run of poor flying by me, I did manage to do a decent flight today. Wayne and I went to Llangollen, along with a lot of other people. It was pretty busy, with lots of people in the air when we got there (we weren’t particularly late, just that people were eager). There was an inversion, and it was blue above, so no-one had gone XC at this point. After two abortive launches, I finally realised I had a knot in my lines, which Liz sorted out for me. Next launch was fine. I climbed out fairly quickly and got more or less up to the big gaggle. Everybody must have got bored at that point, since they all went on a glide (Grouse had already gone, and was climbing over the back, so maybe they were just following her), so I went too.

The first few km were a bit tricky, in the blue, but the gaggle I was with made it easier, for all of us. Quite a few people seemed to go down just behind Llangollen.

After that it got a lot easier, as the clouds started to form, and, for me, all the ones I went to worked. The first part of the flight, I tended to be playing catch up – which has one advantage that you can see where the lift is. Later on, when the gaggle I was in was getting smaller, I did do some leading out (maybe that’s why I went down in the end!).

Most of the climbs I was in were quite strong. Interestingly, it got rougher around 4.00pm, when I was expecting it to smooth off a little. Base was higher, I think around 4800′ was the highest I got. It was, though, an incredibly slow day, with the drift petering away to nothing – and when I landed at 5.00pm, at New Radnor, it was nil wind. Altogether, I flew for five hours – with only the first ten minutes or so on the ridge. 84km with turnpoints (my longest PG flight), so clearly a very slow day. very scenic though, with good visibility, and flying over, or close to, plenty of other sites – the Gyrn, Rodney’s, Long Mountain, Corndon, Sarn, and finally Bache.

In the end, I made a mistake, and instead of hanging around at cloudbase waiting for some clouds to form in the blue hole ahead, I took a risk, found nothing, and went down. Naturally, there were plenty of clouds ten minutes later. But I was tired, and getting impatient.

Not so tired, probably, as Grouse, who flew for seven hours and did, I think, 103km.

Wayne, who had a shorter XC than me, did the retrieve honours. Otherwise, on a bank holiday, I’d still be at the side of the road hitching.

Tracklog on XC Flights page (see top tabs) as usual. No photos. Unlike Judith, I can’t do two things at once, so flying and taking photos is impossible for me.

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Geoff writes: sunny, but howling. A day of gardening (well, pulling up weeds – I don’t really plant things); visiting museums (House on Crutches in Bishops Castle) and archery (for a short time – it was really cold in the evening).

A good forecast for tomorrow, most of the pilots in the UK are currently planning to be at Llangollen. Should be interesting.

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Judith writes: First task of the British Open in St Andre, France. People had thought the night before that today might be too windy, but we woke to light winds and blue skies. We all headed up the hill and a 62km turnpoint task was called. It seemed a bit cramped with 150 pilots on the hill. I have become used to a somewhat smaller number. As soon as the window opened, loads of people were off. The race start wasn’t for another hour and the start gate was only 3km away, so I launched about 20 minutes in and started to work on getting height. A huge group of gliders turned as one and started heading for the ridge ahead. This really confused me. I was sure the start was still 30 minutes off, but others started following them. I got my task notes out and checked I was right about the time. It was only a couple of minutes later that it clicked that they were getting further away, but in a much better position to glide to the first turn point.

So I tried to push out into the valley as well and followed a glider with a really good line. He fell out of the thermal, so I glided to the ridge ahead, but in big sink all the way. I slid past the lowest part of the ridge and straight into the venturi effect. I knew it was going to happen, but had little choice. I popped round the corner of the ridge and connected with good lift. With Kirsty’s advice in mind, I soared up the ridge, in lift all the time and overtook a number of people. At the end of the ridge was the promised thermal, and I started working it. However, with the strong wind I was being pushed back over the top of the ridge. Once I got enough height I pushed forward to the turnpoint, hoping to pick up something along the valley. I lost more height but found a thermal over some black rocks. I would take it, but being weak, it would drift me over into the gully. I played thermal and turn back several times and then evaluated my options. Taking a low thermal back might blow me over the ridge, and soaring along it would put me in the lee. I had watched others land and also saw strong upper winds by looking at the people above. In the end I decided that I wasn’t going to make it out of the place I was and went down to land. There were a group of us, including Martin Knight, Michal, Sander and Steve Newcomb. I have developed a new policy of cheerfulness in the landing field. No point in moping! I was happily being cheery until Martin told me that if I didn’t pack it in he’d burn my glider.

Safely downloaded, I got a bit of a fright when I was reminded about handing back my live tracker unit. I had half an hour to hand it in before my score was disqualified. I can’t get used to these newfangled rules.  

See photos of today.

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After the wildest post-comp party I have ever been to we had to leave early today. We were up and off for 8am and had a quick breakfast in Balaguer and then headed off. 15 minutes later, I remembered that we had forgotten the parcel shelf, so we had to turn back and collect it.

Just before Barcelona, Emma’s tomtom seemed to go to the April 1^st version and they sent us from one roundabout to the next and back to the first. From Barcelona it was howling all the way to St Andre, where it was freezing and I had to go home and change from Ager to Alpine clothes.

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Geoff writes: a day of fixing soakaways, and gardening. Between the showers.

I’m sure I used to have a more interesting life than this.

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