| Flight details: | Arrived at Liddington around 10.30 to find 7/8 cover with a nice breeze coming up the hill and no one there. It did look as if the cloud cover was beginning to break up further west so with fingers crossed I got ready. Eventually there was six or seven of us on the hill so it wasn't going to be that stressful for a boat around and to see what there was.
Too early to leave the hill but I had a quick flight just for the fun it whilst we waited for the cloud to break up and I had the air to myself. Eventually things improved enough and the couple of wings in the air were getting a tad higher showing things were starting to hot up, although not exactly booming.
Just before 1 O'clock I took off in hot pursuit of a Boom 10 and with him and his friend on a Mentor 4 we climbed out in weak thermal to around 3000'… seemed very slow going but at least we were away. I spotted Andrew Craig following us although a bit lower. We headed off on the trade route, at least in my mind. My first targets being Aldbourne then onto towards Hungerford and Combe. I tend to think of the route to Hungerford as the easy bit, with Aldbourne about 6km downwind it's nice and straightforward giving you time to settle into the flight. Plus, I've always found a nice climb somewhere around the village and I wasn't disappointed this time either. Next stop Hungerford 16km from take off. Being just about at base it wasn't too much of a worry especially with a couple of top up climbs en-route.
The joy of this route is that if you bomb out then there's the number 46/48 bus which you can get from either Aldbourne or Hungerford back to Foxhills which is right near Liddington…oh the joy of XC planning and studying bus timetables!! I really must get out more!
Anyway, with another good climb from Hungerford and being back at base I had Coombe in my sights…. You gotta admit it's nice to fly over Combe at cloudbase watching others ridge soaring. Back to the task at hand. Optimistically, |
