Geoff writes: the plan this morning was to get up early, check the forecast, probably go to the Peaks, and then on to the Lakes. It almost worked. I woke early, then read the paper, then phoned Andy, then packed, then set off for the Peaks. But ten miles later, on top of a hill where I could see a long way, there was just wall to wall cloud in the direction of the Peaks. I phoned Andy again, who confirmed that was what it was like in the Peaks. So, back to Bishops Castle for breakfast, and discusssions with Graeme and Dave. I checked out Sarn, but it was too far off, so, reluctantly, ended up at Corndon. By the time I got there, it was wall to wall cloud here too. Still we all went up and had a few goes. The cloud then started to break, and I had another go, promptly getting a massive frontal, asymetric, stall, back flip – or something like that. Anyway, it wasn’t nice. But it recovered, quicker than I did. I landed, then relaunched a bit later, straight into a much nicer thermal which took me away from Corndon – always a good thing to be.

Unfortunately, base was only 3200′ above sea level, around 1550 above take off. The drift was taking me into the big hills behind Sarn, towards Bache, and I just didn’t have the ground clearance for that with base so low. So I slightly cross winded it, getting to base again a couple of times, but in the end lost it and landed for a very short 15km. Still, better than nothing, and I was the only one to get away. As usual, a few minutes after I landed, there was a bird thermalling out of the field.

The retrieve was as always – the first lift was within five minutes, someone passed me, drove on, then turned round, and took me to Church Stoke. The second one was also within five minutes – they also passed me, turned round, and took me to White Grit – nowhere near where they were actually going, but I gave them lots of tourist information in recompense. Then I was walking the rest of the way, up Corndon, when Ellie drove down on her way home, picked me up, and took me back to the car at the top.

So, all in all, could have been a lot worse, not a bad day. But I’m not bothering with the tracklog.

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