| Flight details: | The thought of actually planning a trip to Milton Keynes would normally fill me with dread, to say the least, unless of course it's by paraglider. With all the forecasts looking reasonable for Saturday of I trotted to Milk Hill, along with a lot of people it has to be said.
Epic looking sky in the morning and a breeze on the hill looked very promising indeed. The thermic activity didn't seem to start too well and close to the hill it was very lumpy with broken lift. Oh well I thought it was bound to get better. Getting a bit lazy I'd decided that would at least try and make sure I landed in or near a town so I could have a relatively easy retrieve. Given how the morning played out and a relatively late get away I changed my declared a goal and planned for Milton Keynes instead at measly 105 km ;)
As you can imagine, the eventual climb out from the hill was busy and actually quite difficult …. finding a decent core and 360'ing whilst avoiding everyone else. Anyway, eventually it worked out and I bumbled over the back in a reasonable climb. As normal from Milk, first port of call being Marlborough… made a bit more interesting this time in that there was some farm stubble/scrub fire nicely showing the wind direction with smoke rising to well over 3000 feet just behind the golf course. What a target! There were 3 of us in our little gaggle, don't know who but an Enzo and a Cayenne 5 and we stayed together more or less until past Oxford. It worked really well in terms of gaggle flying with each of us finding the thermals etc at different times and then zooming of on slightly different tracks looking for the next bit of lift.
It was an odd day in that the clouds more or less petered out once past Oxford making it a little more awkward. Thermic strength varied from climbing in zeros to real boomers and then getting a hammering at the inversion layer.
As I headed by Oxford and a good climb from the car plant my track took me north of Aylesbury, by now our little |
