August 2010
Monthly Archive
Saturday, 14th August 2010
Judith 15 Aug 2010 | : Party, party, party...
Day Two of Farmer Phil’s Festival. After a shower and BIG breakfast we headed back out to the festival. Geoff and I were keen to see Nikki Rous and The Daughters in the acoustic tent. Both were excellent as usual. The other act we were keen to catch was Rodney Branigan, who plays two guitars simultaneously.
There was lots of sheltering from the rain again as it poured off and on all day, but in the afternoon, the brilliant Weapons of Sound came on the main stage. They play percussion on old recycled stuff, like sinks, traffic cones, pipes and shopping trolleys. They were lucky that the sun was out for their whole set. The Zimbabwean band Chimanimani were less lucky. The dancing was interrupted by a massive rain shower and they found themselves playing to an empty mosh pit. Not sure about the logic of putting Hazel O’Connor on at 8.30pm, since she was a bit mellow and jazzy, and people were in a dancing mood. All the lightweights disappeared early on, but Wayne and I partied the night away, dancing to Greenland Whalefishers (a kind of Pogues tribute band) until I was so tired (and a little tipsy) I couldn’t stand up any more.
Friday, 13th August 2010
Judith 14 Aug 2010 | : Party, party, party...
If there’s one thing that can guarantee it will be bad weather it’s Farmer Phil’s Festival (Ged on moi land!). Given that the BP Cup and the BCC final are also on, the weekend was doomed! We were hopeful that the forecast would hold true and the rain would clear in the afternoon. We managed to get there to see Mark Leavesley’s band The Mouths open the festival. They were unlucky in that it started to bucket down as soon as they started the first song and two of their numbers were interrupted by power cuts. Good set though.
It poured off and on all day, so frequent scuttling into trade tents and under the marquees was required. We ate, drank, danced and made merry and had a nice day. Best band of the day was Elephant Talk, with and amazing singer. Best band of the night was The Amigos, who rocked the place and had everyone dancing at midnight. Geoff wasn’t drinking, so we came home to be able to get a shower and breakfast in the morning before heading out for more groovy music in the rain.
Thursday, 12th August 2010
Geoff 12 Aug 2010 | : Webcasts, Work
Geoff writes: a windy, cloudy day. We did some work around our next conference; and some LMSC stuff, including a newsletter, and the latest multimedia site guide, for Corndon. We’ve been intending to do this for a while, and this week was a good time to do it, since the forecast for the weekend is NE, and there’s a competition here (the BCC, not the BP Cup, which is in Snowdonia) which is likely to go to Corndon.
Wednesday, 11th August 2010
Judith 11 Aug 2010 | : Archery, Flying
This was the best forecast for ages. RASP was giving it really, really good in this area and people were coming from far and wide to fly at the Long Mynd. It was due to pick up, so we got to the hill at 10.20am, just in time to see Kai push forward to Wentnor and then he and Ali Andrews headed over the back. My analysis of the day was that we should get in the air and stay there so we wouldn’t be on the ground when it blew out, and head over the back as soon as we got the height and the sky looked good. I didn’t think the thermals would be really well developed until after 11am, but it was useful to get a feel for the air. It took me a little while to get high enough to go over the back, but looking behind me was a big blue hole. Pushing to the south (and under the good clouds) would have lead me over the sail plane winch, so I flew forward and along the ridge, losing a lot of height in the process.
As I pushed out into the valley to get a climb I could see Geoff going up like a cork popped out of a champagne bottle. I flew right under him about 100′ below him and got nothing! We eventually got high enough to go, but left low, at about 1400′ ATO. We lost the thermal over the back of the Mynd and flew towards Wenlock Edge.
From the north end of the Long Mynd, we could see Mark Wilson flying over to us from base, so I followed him, thinking ‘great, he knows what he’s doing!’. When he started flying along, not under the cloud street, I did wonder, but it was only when he joined the thermal I found, that I realised it wasn’t Mark after all!
The thermal was broken in the very strong wind and we couldn’t work it properly. Geoff landed first, followed by me, Dan (on his first UK XC – well done!) and Karol. Geoff and I managed to get a lift with Graeme and Odette and headed back for another go, but it was too windy for us. Dave Thomas got away late in very windy conditions and managed to get to Bromsgrove (and chose to land there, at home), but most people either bombed at Wenlock Edge, the Clee Hills or just beyond. Barney managed to get to Worcester, leaving all his gaggle trailing behind.
Since it wasn’t flyable for us anymore, we went to do archery instead and it was raining when we drove back over the Long Mynd on the way home. Bit of a disappointing day, especially for those who’d driven a long way.
Geoff writes: given the forecast, it was the right thing to do, get in the air early, and leave early. Judith and I left together, in a reasonable climb, which promptly died out as we were too far back to head to the front. We weren’t really bothered at that point – the climbs on the ridge had been quite strong, there were lots of nice clouds over the back, so we just drifted along expecting to get another climb. The only (small) one we got was when we were very low, and it was very difficult to stay with it, since the wind seemed to have picked up a lot, and we ended up landing, with a couple of others. The climbs over the back seemed relatively few and far between, in spite of the sky, and the lift when we did find it was weak – and other people said the same thing. Most people seemed to land somewhere between Wenlock Edge and Clee Hill, with just a very small number going further (as far as we know at this point). When Dave Thomas left the hill, much later, after we had got back, the wind was very, very top end, and most people weren’t bothering launching.
Two hang gliders left I think – Jeff Thornton getting to Ludlow, and another one, who left earlier, getting further I think.
Funny day really. Looking back on it, I don’t think we would have done anything different.
Tuesday, 10th August 2010
Geoff 10 Aug 2010 | : Archery, Flying, Work
Geoff writes: stunning XC sky, definitely a day for lots of paragliders doing 100km plus from the Long Mynd, except that for most of the day it was way too windy for them. I had a fun time on the hang glider.
Low down, it was fairly bumpy, with lots of very broken thermals. Every so often you would get a really strong thermal which overcame the met wind, and you screamed up. I didn’t bother going XC, but it was certainly possible, and easy to go on a hang glider. I’ve got a bit more nervous about landing out on the hang glider, having got used to the incredible easiness of landing out on a paraglider, where you can land it almost anywhere – whereas the hang glider, you need a nice flat field, preferably with no high crops in it and a clean approach.
One bit of excitement today was seeing a sailplane badly mess up his approach and crash by the road, fortunately with no injuries, except a written off glider. He was lucky there were no tourists around, and the two horses nearby weren’t spooked too much by it. It was quite dramatic.
After a couple of flights, and early evening, we decided not to bother waiting to fly the PGs, and went and did some shooting at the archery field.
Oh, and we were out a bit late today – a nearly four hour phone meeting for our next conference in the morning, which delayed us somewhat.
Monday, 9th August 2010
Judith 10 Aug 2010 | : Archery, Work
A bit of an action packed day. Actually not much action, but a lot of dashing about. We were going to do archery before the front came in, but it got cloudy early on, so we thought we would wait until the sunshine after the rain, except they changed the forecast and there wasn’t going to be any sun after all. We worked on various things, including me starting to re-format our books so they can be read on the new ebook readers. Kindles don’t accept PDF, so it’s a big HTML reformatting job.
Then off to Bishop’s Castle to do some errands and then up and a walk round Corndon to take photos for the next multimedia site guide. By the time we had got up there, it was sunny, but howling. Next archery, then a drink with John and Lyn to talk about committee stuff and then music night at the Bridges. Phew!
Sunday, 8th August 2010
The forecast was finally for some sunny weather and we were getting quite excited about the flying prospects. As the day neared, all the forecasts, except RASP were saying sunshine, or ‘sunny intervals’. RASP was giving a significant area of cloud over Wales and our area, but I couldn’t find it replicated in other charts, so ignored it and went with the optimistic forecasts instead. We thought about going to the Peaks, but decided in the end that it would probably be fine here too, so didn’t bother.
I stayed at Ellie’s after the LMSC girls night out and we watched the morning forecast together and were a little surprised to see the BBC forecaster say “It’s a beautiful sunny start to the day in Wales”, when it was grey and completely overcast in Shrewsbury. I drove through a shower on the way home… Everyone at the Met Office is obviously based in London and sadly none of them have any mates in other parts of the country they can phone up and get them to check what’s happening outside their windows. It’s a bit poor when they say it’s one thing and you look at a sat pic and can see that it’s certainly not the case for most of the UK away from the south east.
It never did clear during the day and there was no wind to speak of until much later. People were pulling their gliders up at the Long Mynd, but didn’t start soaring until 3.30pm, which is when we stopped gardening and went up to fly. The sun did come out at about 6pm and it was a nice evening, with some gentle thermals and some ridge soaring. Conditions were better in the Peaks, but as usual, towing in middle England was the most successful. Will listen to RASP in future!