Forecasters, arses and elbows… I thought it would be raining and blown out today, so I was a bit shocked to see sunshine from early this morning. By lunchtime the wind seemed to be dropping and the sky was looking better and better. To the south the front was coming in, but downwind the sky looked great. Two paragliders started flying and we rushed up the hill. There were loads of HG pilots at the Long Mynd, but only a handful of paragliders. It was gusty at the cars, but better at the front, so after watching Nigel Rue, Pete Wooley and Malcolm Davies, I launched with Richard Westgate. He’d said it was a 100km day and I was keeping my fingers crossed! We launched straight into a strong thermal and circled up together to cloudbase, which was just over 5000′ AMSL, and we headed downwind.

We topped up under the next cloud and were then half way up the next one. If I had been on my own, I probably would have flown under the edge of the cloud (being a cloud suck wimp), but Richard showed the way and led us straight under the centre of the cloud. We never got sucked in and had a great dog-leg cross wing glide to connect with a cloud street. Richard’s thermalling is an act of beauty… so smooth and co-ordinated!

Richard found the thermal to get us up to the street and once up at base we cruised past Brown Clee. Martin was behind us, and I spotted him low behind the Long Mynd. The predicted front was to the south of us and had shut the sky behind us down, so I thought Martin had his work cut out. The next time I looked the grey frontal cloud had gone, to be replaced by a huge blue gap. Ahead of us the sky was also changing. The Malverns were stuck under murky grey skies, and you would be heading for a cloud street which when you got closer seemed to have disappeared. When we had glided as far as we could, Richard found the next thermal again, but I was too far behind him and couldn’t connect with the thermal. It was there, but I couldn’t find it. I was at Cleobury Mortimer at the time, so a respectable distance, but I was determined to get up and go further. I was below launch height and was swearing, shouting at myself and the thermal, promising myself goodies, etc. if only I could get up. I even tried saying “Come on!” in Barney’s accent. I searched and searched, finding broken lift until I admitted defeat and started gliding to a landing field. As I relaxed I hit the thermal… and I had a long climb back to base. By then I was near Great Witley, where I landed yesterday. Ahead of me there was just horrible mackerel sky and the same big gap as yesterday. So what to do? I headed for a ridge with a quarry on it and a lonely cumulus above it. When I got there, there was indeed a thermal, but it gave me such a kicking that I was panicking. The glider was ahead of me, I was being hoicked up and squashed down, so I ran for it! [I found out later that that was nothing in comparison to what Geoff got, but mine was bad enough!].

I glided as far away from the quarry as I could and ended up landing in an unsuitable field with little trees and training slope sizes bumps. To my utter amazement, within 10 minutes of me landing, the perfect cloud streets had developed. I talked to Martin later and he also noticed the rapid pace that the sky was changing. Strange day!

So I landed in what is rapidly becoming my second home, Great Witley. It’s the third time I have landed there now. The farmer who owns the field where I landed came over with a big smile and insisted that he wouldn’t let me carry my pack to his house, instead he got his tractor and chauffeured me. He took me to his house, introduced me to his wife and two new kittens (adorable!), served me tea and cake and then drove me to the local pub. There I bumped into the guy whose field I landed in yesterday, who said if I land there tomorrow, I should pop by for coffee. People are so nice!

Geoff writes: I was a bit dubious about the wind strength today, expecting to fly the hang glider instead, so I wasn’t ready when Judith and Richard launched. But it seemed fine for them – for the 60 seconds or so they were on the hill – so I got ready. Martin had arrived, and managed to get off before me, since a gust had tangled up my glider and I needed to unclip to sort it out. So Martin launched maybe 20 minutes or so after Judith, and meĀ 15 minutes or so after Martin. I got away pretty quickly. The climb out was strong and quite rough, but I thought it would get better once I left the hill. I went on a glide to the next cloud, leaving the lift early because it was rough, and was transitioning quite happily, when out of the blue – with no warning at all – I got into massive lift. None of this “hitting some lift and working hard to core it” – it went straight from slow sink, on the glide, to showing lift of 8 metres per second on my vario – with nothing in between. And the glider was pitching around a lot, and felt unsafe. There was no obvious reason for the sudden lift, no cumulus above me, but the sky looked a bit wave-like (though it probably wasn’t wave, just some frontal stuff, maybe convergence). I decided I really, really didn’t like this, and went to land – which took me a long time, since I had to lose over 3000 feet, and it was really hard to find the sink. And when I did, the lift came very soon after. It just didn’t feel like a normal day. Some roughness I can handle, a lot more than I could a year ago. But this felt strange. Eventually I did get down, very relieved.

I later compared the tracklogs. Judith’s said:

Max/min climb rate: 2.88 / -2.85 m/s over 60 seconds

Martin’s was:

Max/min climb rate: 3.57 / -2.65 m/s over 60 seconds

He said it was pretty rough at times.

And mine was:

Max/min climb rate: 6.42 / -7.31 m/s over 60 seconds

Quite a difference, both in lift and sink. And no spiral dives or other rapid descent techniques.

I did try to get back to the Long Mynd for another go, on the assumption it would have calmed down later on, but landing between the Lawley and Wenlock Edge always guarantees a slow hitch, especially on a Sunday. So I got back too late to fly again. A shame, because I think it did smooth out later.

See photos of today.

See Richard Westgate’s stunning photos of our flight together.