After this latest flight, I felt like I’d just won a bronze at the Olympics. Chuffed to have gotten something out of the day, but a tad disappointed not to have pushed a bit further.
Current XC league leader Richard Westgate points out that in the UK, the first person to get up and away from the hill often wins the day. Today this was true; Jean-Luc Boudin led the way for a well-deserved 130K, chased by Philip Wallbank, Andy Wallis, Mike Johnson and others.
Having watched everyone slowly climb out as I was still setting up, I thought I’d missed the trip. After half an hour battling low on the gnarly little ridge under an increasingly milky sky, I decided I’d had enough. So I took the next half-thermal over the back, a circling sailplane offered hope. I couldn’t hook the core and the best I could do was drift in a bitty zero. I scraped over the back of Offerton moor at ridge height, low enough to hit a bit of mild rotor. Fortunately, the other side of the Hope Valley was in sun and the cloud above was still just about working. The lift got organized and then I was up above Stanage. Relief.
From there it was slow going. I never made it to cloudbase and there never seemed to be any clouds to go for downwind. The ground was mostly in shade and my only thought was to stay up. A few times, I even found myself tracking back upwind to stay on the sunny, upwind side of clouds. Each time the cloud I was under stopped working, I went for a ground source.
After a couple of hours I needed a pee. I’d been promising myself that I’d have one after I got to cloudbase. But at 50K (respectable distance, I thought) and seeming to have topped out again well short of ‘base, I decided to risk it—to go on a glide and relieve myself. It proved to be the wrong decision and I decked it. Worse still, 10 minutes later, the sun unexpectedly came out (for the next couple of hours), and I watched birds thermalling up from my field. The only consolation was that no-one overflew me and I got a fantastic retrieve from Al James due to Jean-Luc flying so far that his mates abandoned him. Cheers!
Comments 2
That’s ok andy i’ll let you off (this time)
due to a great return with northern direct train to sheffield from Bridlington and MikeJ rtreive to my van .. Back home by 11.30PM WOOOW self-retrieve was (almost) as much fun as the flight.. but not quite 
Posted 17 Aug 2008 at 11:34 am ¶OK—if the train was so good—next time, I’ll meet you at Brid train station and we can have a few beers on the way back—that’s if I can make it under the new Doncaster airspace.
Posted 18 Aug 2008 at 6:33 pm ¶Post a Comment