Geoff writes: we thought the forecast was quite poor, with it likely to blow out soon, and a front coming in, so we wrote off the day, and Judith started painting the hall. But it soon became clear that the day was not blown out, and the sky looked better than we expected. So we went off to Sarn. Shortly after we got there, James and Kai climbed out – with some others – whilst we stood on the ground watching (rather stupidly, but it seemed very rough). James and Kai went XC, the others came back.

And then it got more difficult to get up, with various people having a go, then top or slope landing because it wasn’t really working well enough to get high. I had a long walk up from part way down the hill at one point, as did Judith and others. But finally, the wind picked up a little, and we all launched. It was easy to stay up, but we seemed to drift back fairly quickly. Coming back to the front, Mark picked up something just in front, so we all joined him, and climbed out – Mark left it, he was guiding, but Neil Roberts, Judith and I stayed with it. Neil and Judith eventually caught me up, but then Neil went back to the front, whilst Judith and I stayed with it, though it was getting weaker (or maybe we just were losing it). As we drifted over the back, I stayed with what we had, Judith went hunting for the core. The result was that she ended up a couple of hundred feet below me, and eventually landed. I was expecting to join her, but got a climb from the downwind edge of a ploughed field, which took me to base, at around 4800′. I managed to follow the cloud street for a while, topping up, then went for another cloud, but got low just past Knighton.  Again, I was going to land, but again got a climb – took it to around 3000′, but stupidly lost it, and that was what ultimately put me on the ground, though I did drift for a while in zeros and one.

So, a careless mistake, losing concentration a little, put me down, but the flight was a good one. 41km, to south of Kington. Though I’m sure (and so are Kai and James) that there was a lot more potential in the day.

And the retrieve was even better. Before I was even out of my harness, Graeme, Odette, Kai and James drove up – they’d seen me land, and Graeme had just retrieved Kai and James from where they had landed near me. The fastest retrieve ever!

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