Flight

Today felt like some of the BCC rounds I've done recently, just without the other pilots. Arrived at the Malverns in the morning to find it howling and gusty which, to be fair, is what the forecast suggested.  So I went for a walk along the ridge. There are definitely worse places to do your parawaiting.  I was expecting things to calm down early afternoon and the sky was starting to look pretty epic, so I wandered back to my car, got my glider and walked back to the top.... where it was still howling! On the bright side it was less gusty now.
After half an hour I was joined by a local pilot - Phil. We chatted parabollox for half an hour until he decided the afternoon would be better spent trimming his hedge.  So I was back on my own apart from the tourists.  At around half 3 there began to be launchable lulls in the wind, so I started getting ready. Unfortunately the sky was starting to fill in a bit too but I clipped in and began to unfurl my glider which got all the tourists excited. It had got windy again though, so I was less excited than they were... But then there was a lull, so I pulled the glider up and launched.  It felt like no time passed before I was 1000ft above the hill. I imagined all the tourists were down there watching me thinking 'Look how high he is. He must really know what he's doing!'. In reality, they probably lost interest once they had to start craning their necks. 
After that: Clouds and glides and strong thermals and very very weak thermals. Then I landed in the middle of nowhere.  
Bizarrely it was much windier within 200ft of the ground than it was higher up.  It had probably been flyable all afternoon, I just needed a nutcase wind dummy to test that theory out for me.
It's been ages since I last did an XC in the UK, so this was very enjoyable.