| Flight details: | ….and are you displeased to see me? An eventful day at Leckhampton.
First time at this site and I watched and waited in the blustery wind as many pilots had launch problems and in some cases were struggling to stay up let alone get away from the hill. When I plucked up courage at around 1:00pm to go in a lull I flew straight into a thermal that took me up on my own to over 4,000 without the need for a single beat. Best climb out ever for me.
Heading downwind was a lot of fun in a mainly blue sky. Swarms of sailplanes marking thermals and some ground sources, that worked as I thought they might, provided a nice ride South. I had planned to slip between the Kemble ATZ and the Highgrove restricted areas since I wasn't entirely sure about the status of the later; although I now know for sure that the restriction applies to helicopters and microlights. Coming over Tetbury I was losing height fast and switched focus from where I was going to finding a safe landing.
I landed in a pasture field next to the A433 Bath road but before I even had my helmet off a police car pulled up and policeman climbed over the wall. He wasn't wearing a helmet but did have a pistol that would have done Dirty Harry proud. At this point I looked at my GPS and saw I was close to the middle of the restricted area. He took all of my details and wanted to know where the rest of my gang were (the notorious Catherine, Gus, Emily and Andrew), what cars we had, where they were and who else had landed nearby (no one as far as I knew). He sent his colleague off to see if others were nearby and phoned someone - MI5 or GHHQ, who knows- with my details. When his mate came back empty handed I heard him say, “He seems genuine”. Genuine what? Nutter? Monarchist? Anarchist? Plonker?
“You stay here” he said to me and went off with his mate on another recce. About 30 minutes later they passed by in their car, an arm came out of the window and waved and they were gone. Free at last.
But, helmets off |
