We all got up late, mainly because everyone seemed to have looked out of the window and decided to have another half an hour to rest our aching legs from the night before. It was cloudy, as usual.

We hoped that it would burn off like yesterday, so headed off to the Long Mynd at lunch time. It was packed! Most of the DSC seemed to be there and it was nice to see so many old friends, including John Stevenson. It was scratchy and someone would launch and stay up, so everyone else would get off, then it would get sinky and everyone would land. The birds were out in force, but that may have been because it was so gloomy that the rabbits thought it was evening and were out playing bait.

Dave decided to have another test flight of my Aspen, so I got a go on his glider, the very yummy Avax XC2. I like it. A lot. We set ourselves a task of getting a reasonably decent flight in the XC league and planned to do the Long Mynd ridge run and by the time we had done that the sun would be out and we would get high and fly to Craven Arms for tea and scones. I got a head start by launching first and bombing along the course on the XC2. The start was Black Knoll and I got there no problems at all. Passing back by the gliding club I passed Dave on his way south. It got a little tricky towards the north end but I followed some birds which turned out to be no help at all. There were about 12 buzzards (and a gaggle of crows) near Pole Cottage. Their plumage was still slightly grey and I think they were young, still finding their wings, so they were happy to fly close, mess about in sink as well as lift, and generally just fly about testing their muscles. It was amazing to fly with them, albeit briefly, because flying with them would have put me on the ground for sure, they were that random. So back to Black Knoll, flying over launch looking down over lots of upturned faces of people who didn’t take off (why?) and then back to Pole Cottage.

By the time I was at the finish of the ridge run (Black Knoll again) I had lapped Dave (I have to stress that this was all due to the glider, no way superior skill on my part!) and was trying to get high and stay high to wait for him. I was there with Liz, Andy, Brian, Simon and Pete Attley (and Pete Cook, but he fought it out, landed and I saw him walking back later). Despite our best efforts, the sky was 8/8 cloud cover and only very weak thermals, so we got lower and lower and decided to cut our losses and top land before we got flushed. The first question on Pete A.’s lips was ‘Have you got any food?’ So we pooled our resources, and it’s really interesting to see who carries what in their harness. I’ve never thought of flying with onion bhajis, but may change my view on that in the future. It had dropped off to nothing, but Pete offered to provide us with wine and cheese, but this would mean flying back to his car, getting the food and flying back, so we set him the challenge to do that while we waited for him. He’s always game and was up for it, but by the time conditions improved we all wanted to be in the air so we all flew back together.

Dave, meanwhile, had passed us, followed a bird and flew off the end of the south end of the ridge to land a Plowden. I went to get him, so he wouldn’t miss the wine and cheese. Turned out we both missed it! What we didn’t miss was Ali and Sally having a really nice evening flight. Ali got high and top landed and it was great to hear her whooping with joy as we drove off.

See photos of today.

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