Personally, I thought today would be a write-off as it would be too windy on the Long Mynd. As we woke up we could already see shadows dancing on the curtains, so the trees were blowing. Others’ had it dropping off mid-afternoon, so I suppose it just depends on what forecast you trust. Unfortunately for us, it lulled for about 20 minutes at 10.25am, and three people started flying paragliders, and the sky just looked fantastic, so we were lured up the hill – where it was howling. The two remaining PGs duly landed going slightly backwards and after that it was generally just hang gliders and Glyn. He does like a bit of the rough stuff…

Loads of people had turned up and were waiting it out, but by 3pm, I had got hungry, so went home for some sandwiches, while Geoff rigged the hang glider. He had a pleasant, if a little bouncy, flight. By 4.30pm, the clouds were decaying upwind and the chances of going XC were getting less and less likely. It was still windy and I didn’t want to waste more of the day waiting for the wind to drop, so we packed up the glider and headed to Stretton to do archery.

Yesterday I asked Anne to have a look at my release and she gave me some exercises to do which really helped, but today Tom had a good look at my shooting. I have been a little listless with my archery lately and Geoff has been asking if I still enjoy it. I seem to want to spend more time in the club house drinking tea than shooting. This was because I was getting progressively worse, while others around me have been improving enormously. I thought I had let my arm muscles really go over the winter, since I have a lot of trouble getting to full draw; I have taken to nodding (pushing my face towards the string, rather than pulling it fully to my chin), and I often pull a muscle in my shoulder and have to give up because it hurts. It has dented my confidence and therefore affected my enjoyment. So when Tom looked at my shooting he saw various flaws. Shooting with my eyes closed, I was trying and trying to pull the string back, and it wasn’t working. So we measured the poundage I am pulling. My bow should be 34 pounds, and we slackened off the limbs a while ago to reduce the poundage because I was having trouble pulling that. It is now set at 37 pounds, so 11 pounds more than I pulled last year, and significantly more than Geoff pulls. No wonder I can’t get the damn thing to full draw!

So we have some major tweaking to do to try to get the poundage down and the bow tuned. If we can’t get it to 30 – 32 pounds I need to sell the limbs and get others, so Sunday is the big tweak day. It’s a huge relief. I’m not completely useless, like I have started to think, but the equipment I have is wrong for me at the moment.

As we drove back home over the Long Mynd, there were gliders scattered all over the landing. It dropped enough for people to fly from 6pm and from the smiles on people’s faces, it looked like everyone had a nice time. Well done Melise for a great flight. She was grinning ear to ear when we saw her.

No comments yet - please add one »