September 2010
Monthly Archive
Tuesday, 14th September 2010
A mega day of work. Meetings from 9.30am til lunchtime, and then intensively working on our conferences. My programme is finally shaping up and I may have a former Miss Black Deaf America as one of my speakers. Brains and beauty! Her proposed topic is on ‘who controls the Deaf community’, so I am hoping it will elicit a lot of discussion. I’m still on tenterhooks waiting for a really famous person in the deaf world to get back to me about being a keynote presenter and if he says yes, it’ll be an amazing coup for us.
The evening was spent doing more prep for going away. We have a house sitter, so lots of tidying in the garden and rather than emptying the freezer we now have more apple juice than we’ll be able to drink before we go. Is there a cocktail with apple juice? I might have to invent one…
Monday, 13th September 2010
I woke up very early today and left the house at 5.40am to take my brother in law to the airport, so he could get to work in Limerick on time. Once at Stanstead I was able to get home via a much faster route, avoiding the M25 entirely. I was back home at 11am, but feeling shattered and with a very upset stomach, which hasn’t yet settled. Damned dulse!
Geoff was working all day and I did bits and bobs, as well as a bit of snoozing. The weather is really autumnal with strong winds and rain. Not as bad as in Scotland though. I heard all about it from my uncle Bruce. Happy birthday again!
Sunday, 12th September 2010
Geoff 12 Sep 2010 | : Flying, Miscellaneous activities
Geoff writes: Judith was at a family event today (and tomorrow) in Essex. I did consider going, but we have a big meeting Tuesday morning, and I need at least one full day of working before that, so didn’t go.
For the flying, it was good for hang gliders, bad for paragliders. I still would like to do a long PG flight for the league, so hoped it would be ok today, even though the forecast was fairly strong. Specifically, I hoped that, with a NW forecast, Long Mountain – which takes strong winds – would be ok. In the event, first thing it was west, so I went up to the Mynd, but it was too strong, and a bit off to the north. I, and a few others, then went to Long Mountain, where the wind strength was fine, but too far west. In fact, it never went NW at any point throughout the day. So we duly went back to the Mynd, where it was on, but still too strong, though dropping. It seemed like it would probably drop enough by around 4.00, for at least the chance of an XC. RASP in the morning had given it weak thermals, but the sky seemed a lot better than that, and some hang gliders had gone XC, so it was worth sticking with the PG.
Rather than drop off more, though, it picked up. It could have been wave influenced, with the wave going in and out of phase. Lulls, where it was easily launchable, then suddenly picking up again. In the end, around 5.30 or so, I did launch, and it was fine – until suddenly I started going up rapidly, and became stationary. I eventually, and very slowly, managed to push out and lose height, went back to land, and promptly got blown back, landing going backwards. And that was enough excitement for me for the day. And a lot of wave bars had appeared by then, in the distance.
For the hang gliders, in spite of earlier reports that they were in convergence above Cheltenham, it wasn’t quite that good. The furthest was 90 km or so (as far as I know), with others down at around 55km. But I would have been happy with either of those!
Judith writes: I drove down to Colchester to meet my parents, sis and family, at my cousin’s (gorgeous) house. From there we went to Upminster to celebrate my aunt and uncle’s 40th wedding anniversary. I haven’t seen some of my family for a few years and it was nice to catch up. Nice food and plenty of bubbly later we headed back to Colchester.
Saturday, 11th September 2010
Judith 11 Sep 2010 | : Miscellaneous activities
Today was open day at Snailbeach mine and we have been wanting to go to the deep mine tour for some years. They only have the tours a couple of times a year and it’s always been flyable on the open days. Today was way too windy, so we duly arrived at the mine at 10am and got entry tickets one and two. The tour was excellent with our guide an extremely enthusiastic volunteer, who seemed to know something about every mine in the UK, as well as the local history.
Snailbeach used to be the most productive lead mine in Europe and it is 1700′ deep, although most of it is now flooded. They started extracting barytes in the latter part of the mine use and you can still see the white mineral in abundance in the shafts. Next we toured the buildings above ground and then went home to do yet more work.
A group of hangies are around this weekend on an XC meet and they’ve extended the pub invitation to us this evening, so we’re off to talk hang-dangling with the lads.
Friday, 10th September 2010
Rubbish weather and a good job too. I have so much work to do for the next Supporting Deaf People conference. Today was a knuckle down day and I have the initial round of publicity done and already have the first six delegates. Tomorrow more work on the programme and presenters. Geoff was busy working on his conference and then went out to prune the apple tree. He brought in about 10kg of apples, most of which I have juiced, but then I ran out of receptacles. We’ll be drinking the stuff for weeks!
Thursday, 9th September 2010
On paper today was a good day, with the BBC and others giving a nice sunny day. The only source of doom was RASP, who were giving weak thermal strength and overdevelopment from early on. Geoff had a phone meeting at 9.30am and then some follow up work to do, so we didn’t get out as early as we hoped. Kai was leaving to go XC as we arrived at the Long Mynd and the wind was picking up, so rather than chatting we got into the air fast.
I got a good climb from the south end, but didn’t take it back low enough, lost it and had to come to the front, losing most of my hard earned altitude. Geoff, Mick and Martin came to join me at the south end, but didn’t get into the same climb and this time I did go low over the back. I figured that if the wind was going to pick up more it would just get harder and time was getting on.
I lost the climb over the A49 and had to fly south west to connect with another cloud. I thermalled with it over Wenlock Edge, but then lost it again and went on an ambitious glide to a big cloud near Brown Clee. On the way there I lost loads of height and was berating myself for chasing a cloud that was too far. However, I was convinced it would work if I could just get under it. I was getting to the point where I thought I would have to land when I got the climb and screamed up to base at 3700′. I pulled out of the climb and went on glide, but got sucked into the cloud and had to big ear to keep the ground visible below me.
The next cloud was over the other side of Brown Clee and I started spotting showers to the north and increasingly big clouds to the south. At this point I resolved to set myself a ceiling of a height I wouldn’t go above, since I couldn’t be sure how big the clouds were getting above me. As I progressed, the wedge of sunlight I was flying along was getting smaller and smaller and the showers were starting to develop in front as well as to the north. Once I got to near Kidderminster, there was no sun on the ground and my path was blocked by big clouds and I could count seven showers around me. Time to land!
I picked a nice big field on the edge of town, but then realised it had posh horses in it, so I diverted to a cropped field and did a spot landing on the path along the outside edge of it. A nice elderly dog walker came to ask where they’d dropped me from and then gave me directions to the train station (too far) and pub (I’d be able to get a taxi from there). 10 minutes later he came back and said he’s drive me instead. What a kind man. To make a long and boring retrieve story short (too late!), I bumped into Kai at Kidderminster bus station and Geoff came to pick us up. Kai had got to Bromsgrove and also been blocked by the cunims, except he got rained on before he managed to land.
Highlight of the day was circling with six buzzards under a big cloud. You don’t often see them high up, but the seven of us were happily climbing together, with one circling close to me to have a closer look. Just amazing.
Geoff writes: rubbish flight, brilliant hitching. Actually, the flight wasn’t that rubbish in the circumstances, but short, only 20km. It took me a while to get away from the Mynd, mostly because I don’t like being drifted back too low, partly because of the glider airfield we share the ridge with, so I wanted a strong climb, and kept pushing forward, and, eventually, I got my climb. This took me to base with another glider, and we wandered off down wind. I was happily on my third climb, past Wenlock Edge, when I saw a shower, and quite a large cu-nim, in the distance off to the north. A few more 360s, and there were four showers and two cu-nims. And it was pretty dark ahead. So my plan changed, and I stopped taking the climb up to base, and decided to head towards the edge of clouds, rather than the centre – just because I couldn’t be at all sure what was above the small part of the very large clouds I was under. This was the right decision for safety reasons, but the wrong one for distance, and soon I was down on the ground, near Brown Clee. I landed in a field with sheep in, not noticing the farmer who was also there until too late – but he was fine, very friendly.
The area around Brown Clee is the middle of nowhere. I got to a road, the sort of road which has one car every 24 hours – and about ten minutes after I got there, it duly arrived, and he stopped, and gave me a ride to Diddlebury. A really nice person, genuinely interested in what I’d done. He dropped me off at the school, where he was picking up his daughter, and I walked a short distance to the main road. After hitching there for all of five minutes, I got picked up by another extremely nice person, a lady on her way home to Craven Arms. Very quickly, she offered to take me back to our car on the Mynd – quite a detour for her. On the drive it turned out that she and Judith knew lots of people in common, both having worked at University of Wolverhampton.
I nearly always enjoy the hitching back after an XC, not least because the people who pick you up are usually very nice (otherwise they woudn’t have stopped) and often pretty interesting to talk to.
Getting back to the car so quickly, I went to retrieve Judith and Kai from Kidderminster.
Wednesday, 8th September 2010
Judith 09 Sep 2010 | : Archery, Trying, but failing, to fly
If agonising over where to go flying was a competitive sport, Geoff and I could be top class. So the forecast (as we understood it) was SE going S, SW in the evening. Possibly getting cloudy in the afternoon. Our options were Bache, the Wrekin or the Gyrn. So here was our reasoning:
The Wrekin: Kai made a convincing argument, but the proximity of Shawbury airspace would limit our downwind XC ability and just because he can fly round it or do a triangle on a comp wing doesn’t mean we can.
Bache: It’s a load of hassle getting the key and Steve Lowe said the sky was messy and it was SW and strongish at Kington.
The Gyrn: Mick reported that the sky hadn’t sorted itself out yet and the XC potential isn’t fantastic.
Steve had suggested Elan Valley and Piers confirmed it was off to the south a bit, but looking good. So we dismissed all the original options and plumped for Elan Valley. It was indeed looking good – all the way to Rhayader, where the sky started to look dark and ominous. We would have to get into the air and downwind fast to outrun it. Once on the hill the sky was no longer a problem though… the wind was 90 degrees off, so no flying anyway. Graeme and Dave B. also turned up and given the sky we had just driven through, we decided to switch sites and went to Camlo.
We’ve tried and failed to fly Camlo every time we’ve been there, mainly due to strong winds. This time, the winds were so light we didn’t think we could stay up and the sky downwind was good, but getting more threatening ahead. By the time we had our gliders out the wind had gone off and picked up. Graeme had a three minute flight where he didn’t get above the hill and then slope landed over the fence. Dave had to walk some paces down the hill to launch as the wind was still picking up and once in the air zoomed one way and crawled back the other before landing near the bottom of the hill and having to walk back up. At this point Graeme and Dave decided it was high time to tackle the daily crossword and we looked at the approaching rain and started packing up.
The sky was rubbish all the way to the Long Mynd, where it was looking great and the sail planes were having a lovely time. Kai probably had the nicest flight of all of us. Should have listened to him.
We went to archery instead.