Judith's blog

Today was supposed to be classic Thursday and the first really good day on the Long Mynd since we got back from Spain. It’s been a bit frustrating for us, watching all the good days up north, but today was going to be the day. The wind was supposed to be perfect and mostly blown out furher north. RASP indicated it would be an early day, and if we were still in the air by 2pm, a gear shift down would be required.

People were already flying at 9am and we were on site just after 10am and got ready and waited. By this time the wind had dropped nearly to nothing and every passing bird was flapping. A few people tried to soar, but the only one doing anything was Martin B, who tracked along to the north of the ridge. He happily thermalled around for an hour or so, while the rest of us didn’t want to risk going down. Extensive cloud was developing and then breaking, so there were long periods of the valley being in shade. It was also going more south.

I eventually had a punt, but lost the thermal and came to land back on top. The next good cycle took Kai to the start of another big triangle, and we launched too late into the following one, which took Martin K, Nigel B and Martin B over the back. Geoff unfortunately went down, and we broke our golden rule… if you go down you’re on your own. I thought there would be enough time to get him, but as we got back up to launch the next gaggle of three left. By this time we were getting a tad disenchanted with the day. We spent another hour sitting around in nil/SW wind until I saw a group of swifts. I know that you need to launch straight away to get into the good bit of their thermal, but I did a bit of dithering, checking if they were still going up, and by the time I was off, I could feel bits of lift, but I was too low to search for it properly. Geoff had said he would come and get me… another mistake, since two more got away as I was in the bottom landing field. By this time we were getting really cheesed off.

We did launch again, and I got to 1300′ ATO, but it petered out, the drift was taking me along the Mynd and the cloud was rapidly catching up with me. I could see the two guys that had gone landing in Stretton, so I thought, ‘what’s the point?’ As I pushed back forward, Kai was coming back after being out in the valley for about 4 hours and he thermalled past me and went off to extend his triangle.

Geoff had to slope land low on the ridge and was packing up, so I top landed and did the same. It was 4pm, nil wind and the cloud cover extended as far as you could see. It did get soarable again later, but by that time we were in the middle of the next round of the Limes badminton championships, which are still a draw.

Rubbish weather again now until the middle of next week.

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More lousy weather. We worked…
 
 
 
 

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It was all go today, with early appointments, then squeezing an archery session in, before I spent the afternoon in a meeting. Geoff came home to do some programming work to update our online shop, hoping he could go out hang gliding later. It wasn’t to be. It was still windy at 7pm and the daylight was so low we had to turn the lights on.

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The windy weather continues…

Since everything has been on hold for the party preparation, we’re really behind on work stuff. Today was the day to knuckle down and get some of the pile shifted. In the evening we went to karate. Our instructor seemed to think it was perfectly reasonable for us to remember this basic kata. Since this is only our second lesson we could barely remember how to bend down and touch our toes in the warm up, never mind 24 moves in sequence (and on the third round with our eyes closed!). Still, I’m really enjoying the excercise and definetly want to continue.

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Since I was still up at dawn, I could already see the pre-frontal wave appearing and knew there was zero chance of a task at the Cup. Such a shame they didn’t write it off and let people let their hair down the night before. Apparently Nigel Lassiter was flying on the Mynd from 5.30am for an hour, but we didn’t see him.

Ellie, Lester, Viv and Phil helped us tidy up (the job was made easier, since Luke had been collecting bottles and cans the night before) and I then collapsed into bed at 11am to get some sleep. More helpers appeared (thanks Mick, Luke, Paul and Yaz) and by the time I got up again, you wouldn’t have thought we’d had a party at all – except for the gravel drive through the house. A quick hoover had that sorted too.

We spent the rest of the day doing what you do the day after a party… snoozing, eating curry and watching crap telly. I was in bed again at 8pm and slept a full 13 hours. I needed it!

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It was windy from the word go, so the North-South Cup guys went to the Mynd to have a speed gliding contest. Head-to-head, two pilots had to go 500m along the ridge and back. I think the South won again. We were going to go up the Mynd so Geoff could fly the hang glider, but the wind picked up and there was the odd bit of rain, so we just did party preparation. Thankfully Paul, Yaz, Mick, Hayley and Ellie turned up early and we set up the DJ booth and lighting rig. We were going to put up the LMSC marquee to protect the lights, but once there was a really heavy shower, we decided to rig up a tarpaulin that would stretch out from the garage towards the house. Once the PizzaVia van arrived we had to get the trailer up on the raised area and cut down half a tree. It was all fun, interspersed with (too weak!) tea.

Our last job was to cut up the remaining wood for the braziers and Malc Davies thankfully brought his chainsaw to do it. When he called to ask if he should bring anything for the party, he expected me to say sausage rolls, not a chainsaw!

People started arriving shortly before 8pm and the pizza queue swelled immediately. It was expected that people would arrive in dribs and drabs after flying, but with the weather being bad, people were sitting in the camp site waiting to come. Had we known, we would have called people to come early and give us a hand and start eating sooner too.

Once people started arriving, it was a great turnout with over 100 people there. Paul and Sam did a great job with the music and the braziers were well worth the effort, keeping the non-dancers warm. We had a North-South dance-off that I was supposed to be judging, but only three southerners (Viv, Phil and Frankie Coltman) took up the challenge and although I was going to eliminate anyone from below the Watford gap as a matter of principle, Phil told me not to dare! Frankie got a special award at the prize giving the next day for her efforts. Good on her, she’s only about 8!

After that it was all a blur of chatting, dancing (thanks particularly to Marra and Barney, and everybody else who endured being dragged onto the dance floor by me) and boozing. Even Geoff was up bopping (but only once).

Because a task briefing had been called for 8 am the next day, people drifted off at a sensible time, although some who’d watched the forecast (waste of time for Sunday), stayed and partied on into the small hours. By dawn there were only a few heavyweights left and before we knew it, the sun was shining and the pizza van guys needed help getting the trailer back down the ramps. After a preliminary tidy-up, I finally got to bed at 11 am.

It was a really great night. Thanks so much to everyone who came and helped make it such a blast. I was so busy enjoying myself I didn’t take a single photo. If anyone who was there has some, could I have a copy?

See Paul’s photos of tonight.

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Geoff writes: first, we’ve been updating the Twitter feed most of the day with information about the North South Cup. However, Twitter itself – not our feed specifically – has some problems, and is only working intermittently, so if the tweets don’t appear on the right, refresh the page later and they will reappear.

We can’t give a full report on the first day of the comp because we weren’t there. Because of the poor forecast here, they went to Milk Hill, a round trip of around 250 miles, where the forecast was better. This, of course, meant some pilots local to that site drove all the way here last night, only to drive all the way back this morning. But, you do what you have to do to get a good flight (well, most people do, but not us! We were too lazy to do the drive, even though it was pretty clear it would be a write-off here, and probably a reasonable XC day there).

And in fact, from reports, it was definitely the right decision, with many going XC. As far as we know, the furthest was Richard Bungay at 116km, but others in the 70s and 80s. Some results, all to be confirmed, are Dave Thomas at 70 km, Martin Knight 40, Helen Gant 87, Alex Colbeck and Kirsty Cameron around the 50s. Of course, far more than those went XC, but we haven’t seen the list yet. We’ll find out later tonight when we are going to the comp party.

Tomorrow, we think they are staying local, and Long Mountain or the Mynd seem the most likely. But that won’t be decided until tomorrow. But at least they seem to have had a great first day for the comp.

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