Geoff on CorndonGeoff’s turn to write

Judith and I went flying at Corndon. We were running a little late because Judith had to have the stitches out of her knees. As we arrived, around 11.45, Richard, Nigel and Dan had been paragliding, but had landed, because the wind was picking up. Wes and Jim arrived from the Peaks with Jim’s hang glider. Jim and I rigged the HGs, I lauched first and Jim followed. After about 50 minutes of not getting high at all, and getting trashed a little, Jim bottom landed and I top landed.

I sat around for an hour or two, as the sky got worse – the cumulus never really formed nearby. It was still too windy for PGs. Eventually, I saw a cumulus forming above and launched, about 4.40 pm – slightly more lift than before, but it didn’t seem like I could go anywhere. I decided to top land again, but then promptly got a nice thermal which took me to just under base at around 5500 feet, so I went with it. Got low at Montgomery, then got another and climbed a few thousand feet almost to base. By that time I was well past Welshpool, but the sky was really hazy, the ground was getting higher, what I could see looked like the real boonies, and it was late – so I decided to land, flying through another thermal, having done 30k or so. It was the real boonies, on top of a plateau. But a two mile walk to a pub followed by Judith retrieving me ended the day.

Had I been on the PG, I would probably have carried on, since both the landing (not needing a nice flat field) and the walk out (not carrying a HG) would have been much less of an issue.

It never did get flyable for PGs.

See the tracklog.

See photos of today.

See video of Geoff launching.

1 Comment »