| Flight details: | Tagged along with Greg Hamerton to Leckhampton. Greg had done all the hard work of weather analysis and figuring out where to go. I drove. My first visit to Leckhamton. We got there by 9am and other pilots were already there. There was some interesting cloud around with lenticulars forming quite low above the hill. It started working around 11am when the first gaggle went. I half jokingly set a task for Westbury. About 70 k. I didn't expect to get there as thats 20 k past my PB. I then launched closer to 12 when it looked like it was working better and base was higher. Was rewarded with a climb to base at around 3000 feet. I then took it very slowly for the first 15 k and was content to drift along finding bits of lift. I could see a gaggle about 5 k away but I left them to it and carried on with my mincing.
Greg had warned me to make sure I pushed West enough to get to Westbury without ending up in the danger area behind it.
I could see I had to cross a blue gap to reach the next cloud street, so after the next decent climb to around 3500 I pushed out on about 2/3 bar to cross the gap. By this point I was getting close to the M4 and getting a bit lower,around 1000 feet. The wind ward side of the cloud shadow was producing lift so I raced to the front of that and worked a climb back to base. And that was the process.Get high, push across, use the windward side of the cloud to get back up again.
I finally saw Westbury coming up and the realised the flaw in my plan. It had not occured to me how close Westbury was to the danger zone behind it.And I was coming in over the top of the Westbury as my goal. There were brilliant climbs to be had there but the wind now had a strong westerly component to it so any thermals taken were just going to drive me over the danger zone. So I squeezed past Westbury but lost a lot of height and ended up landing a few k past it.
The GPS said 75 k so I was a happy chappy. A walk to Westbury station, a train to Cheltenh |
