Nice day at the Mynd. Very light when I arrived, so set up the PG rather than the HG. People started flying, and getting reasonably high, but there were a lot of wave clouds around which made me nervous, so I didn’t launch. Three or four went XC, but seemed quite low. I decided to sit it out for a while to see if the wave clouds disappeared, and if it got better.

Sitting on the ground whilst others are flying is almost always a mistake. If it’s flyable, you should launch. In the end, I did launch, when there were fewer wave clouds, but really I should have been in the air much sooner. As it was, the wind was picking up, quite gusty, and I had an untidy launch straight into a thermal which took me up to 500′ or so – I didn’t circle because I didn’t want to drift over the back so low.

It took me about half an hour to get away, mostly stepping up and trying to fly forwards – often on speed bar, because I wasn’t penetrating much at all. It was also very rough. Finally, I got a thermal high enough to let myself drift over the back, and it took me to base – actually, a few hundred feet below, I didn’t want to go into cloud – at about 5000′ ASL. Flying towards Brown Clee, I heard Phil Bibby say he was at Clee Hill, and made my second mistake of the day. I did consider tracking a bit more south to follow him, but decided to carry on towards Bridgnorth. I got there easily, with a couple of more thermals, and went a bit beyond, but was getting worried about airspace again, so decided to just go for a glide and not bother about getting any further. Having picked out a nice landing field, and committed to it, on finals, inevitably a really strong thermal came off it, creating a – for me – very large collapse. Hands up sorted it, but I switched fields at the last minute and landed in a much smaller one, which was nice and grassy, and less likely to kick off.

The retrieve was wonderful. I chatted to the farmer and his wife, then was walking up their drive to the road, when his son in law – who hadn’t seen me land, and didn’t know I’d spoken to the farmer – drew up and asked if I needed any help. I begged a lift into Bridgnorth, where he was going to. At Bridgnorth, he said he’d take me a bit further to Much Wenlock. At Much Wenlock, he decided to take me to Church Stretton. Amazingly generous. Dropped me off at the traffic lights, and literally one minute later Pete, the hang glider pilot, arrived on his way to launch, and took me straight back. Brilliant.

Back at launch it was blown out, and anyway I had to go to Birmingham Airport to pick up Judith on her way back from France – passing Phil Bibby on the way, hitching back from his 53k xc.

And the second mistake, not tracking south with Phil – driving to Birmingham, I realised it really had been an epic day, and there were far more kilometres to be done than my 38k. Seemed to me, in retrospect, that 100k should have been possible. So the mistake was not to plan a route ahead of launching, and make sure I knew the route for going south and avoiding air space. Next time….

Track log as usual from XC page.

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