| Flight details: | The paragliding pub crawl has gone national! Under the guise of participating in a BCC round, headed off with a posse of Southern Slackers to Selsley. The BCC crowd was swelled by North/South Challenge flyers who had driven down from Scotland (I think)to what looked like the best site in the UK for the day. The resulting mayhem in the initial climb outs, as the day started to switch on, was not for the faint-hearted. It seemed really hard to get away. In (close!)company with several others, scrabbled desperately in zeros before at last getting the first decent climb. It took over 30 mins after leaving the hill to get above 2,000ft.... Then a fabulous flight over beautiful country, with climbs marked by the many gliders heading SE. After a final flirtation with cloudbase just past Marlborough, I had a glide to the ground uninterrupted by those thermally/climby bits to land near East Grafton - tired, cold, cramp in the legs etc - where a kindly lady directed me to the Swan Inn, a pleasant 40 minute stroll. Mark, Crispin and Grita - who had collected themselves together from various bits of Gloucestershire - picked me up 50 mins later. 63.9km round the points. A very pleasing day out. |
