| Flight details: | I only decided to join the BCC round late on Friday when Martin Long kindly offered me a lift. We arrived on Saturday morning at Merthyr Common for a BCC briefing in cold and windy conditions. On launch it felt windier than I normally would choose to fly in in but once we saw that pilots were doing fine in the air I took off and quickly got a good climb with Martin and Alistair (and some other pilots I have not identified). Conditions near the launch and for the first couple of ridges were tricky and I thought I was down in Ebbw Vale for 10k and was pleased to hear Chris on the radio offering to pick Paul up, however I picked up a climb from my lowest point all flight (other than the landing of course).
The next couple of ridges were tricky but worked but I found myself in rough air when I arrived above Gilwern looking towards Llangattock (where we have camped many times) in one direction and Abergavenny and the Blorenge in the other. I couldn't see any other pilots (and only saw a couple in the distance for the rest of the day). Once I had got away from the ridge and towards the north of Abergavenny the air was smoother and remained so for the remainder of the flight.
I picked up a lovely climb from the end of a spine backed ridge (which I think is Ysgyryd Fawr) watching the walkers standing on the end and this took me up to base at about 4,800' and from thereon it was textbook cloud-street flying – gliding to the next likely looking cloud and climbing to base. Every cloud was working, some too well; I nearly lost sight of the ground above Ross-on-Wye so took to leaving the climbs one or two hundred feet before I was sucked into the whispies.
At Ross-on-Wye I treated myself to a very old Tracker bar that I found in my harness pocket and from there I followed the M5 thinking it would be a good route for being retrieved. I left the motorway once I had crossed to the east face of the Malvern Hills thinking I might do better to fly to Malvern for a |
