Geoff writes: not a bad forecast for today, and though it was cloudy in the morning, the sun came out. I didn’t go to the Peaks yesterday, because the forecast for today was that it would be too windy – in the event, it was fine up there, and I think some long XCs were done from Mam/Lords – certainly a lot longer than my fairly pathetic 12km!

Instead, I went to Long Mountain, where there was a bunch of other pilots too (Andrew, Mick, Michaela, Dennis and Lynda, Kevin, Graeme, Glyn, etc.). In spite of the sky, nobody was getting very high, and I waited a while, launching when some big clouds were passing over. Unfortunately, my harness was wrong, and I struggled to get in it, by which time I’d realised I’d launched at the wrong time anyway, so landed.

I waited a bit longer, then took off when it seemed like others were maintaining. It was pretty rough, and had gone north really, but I managed to climb out, after getting quite low and scratching back up, and left the ridge – on my own, the others in the climb turned back. I was probably only on the ridge ten minutes or less. During the climb out I heard gunfire, gradually getting louder as I got closer to the people who were firing off shotguns in a field below me. I went right over them, which was a bit disconcerting, but I guess they weren’t aiming at me. Or if they were, they need more practice.

The flight was difficult. Three times I got to around 2200′ ATO, but couldn’t get any higher than that, though there was no inversion. Because I was struggling a bit, I was concentrating on the climbs and the clouds, and not really noticing exactly where I was (this is only the second time I have flown Long Mountain). I cross winded it to go to a cloud which wasn’t working, then headed back downwind, but found nothing and landed near the stone circle just north of Corndon, hardly any distance. In retrospect, I should have just tried to get to Corndon, which does take a north wind, and I might well have got up from there. I could have made it on a glide if I hadn’t tried the cross wind option first.

Interestingly, about ten minutes after I landed, the sky to the north, where I’d come from, was more or less completely blue,  though there was still good cumulus development downwind. This is probably the reason why I struggled in the climbs, the air was changing, I was right on the edge of it, and the thermal activity was reducing. Or, equally likely, I was just thermalling badly, and not coring it well enough. One of the problems of going on your own is that you can delude yourself you made the most of the day, since you have no-one to compare it with, whereas in reality you probably really cocked it up.

One mistake I did make was that I should have launched sooner, and got away sooner, when the clouds were better.

The retrieve was easy, as usual. The first car I hitched after walking to the raod stopped for me, took me a short distance, then another ride took me to Chirbury, where Michaela picked me up.

And this post illustrates one of the iron laws of flying XC:

the number of words required to describe a flight is inversely proportional to the number of kilometres flown.

Or, more simply:

the shorter the XC, the longer the description.

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