Judith's blog

Forecast was for a breezy day, so we hooked up with Wayne to go hang gliding at Corndon. When we got there Nigel and Phil B. were already there, along with two hang glider pilots. Surprisingly, it was paraglidable and soon everyone and their uncle turned up.

I got ready, but was having one of those everything-goes-wrong days. I got dragged on my first launch and then got my lines full of bracken. I managed to sort it out, got back in the harness, the leading edge rolled over and the lines got full of bracken again. In the middle of all this, Neil R., James D. and Phil B. got high and went over the back and I still wasn’t off the ground. Arrggg!

My loud and repeated swearing and foot stamping alerted Malcolm who kindly came over and helped me get the glider untangled and I finally managed to launch. Geoff was thermalling above me and I managed to get into the tail end of it, but then lost it at 600′ ATO and had to come back to the front. Geoff could have gone over the back with it, but elected to come back to the front as well. We only made it to behind the cars and landed in the middle of piles of sheep shit, so our gliders now have a nice brown splotchy motif. Very Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen.

It carried on in this vein; I tried to re-launch, got my foot caught in my speed bar, fell flat on my face; tried again, got two lines caught in the velcro of my PTT; calmed down, tried again, stumbled over a rock… It all got very slapstick in the end.

During the centre of the day it became very scratchy. You would get up between 10 and a few hundred feet and 5 minutes later be on the deck again. James D. managed to go XC a second time, but otherwise there was little height to be had.

At 5pm, after lots of flights I did get a thermal which took me to 800′ ATO, but it wasn’t worth going XC with. It got stronger and easier later, but with all my mishaps today I thought I was doing well to walk away unscathed, so bowed out for the day.

See photos of today.

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