| Flight details: | The Dyke, the Gibbet, Frocester, Selsley, Leckhampton, Uffington, Liddington -- Facebook and Telegram buzzed with discussion. I went for Combe Gibbet as being the right direction, without sea or complicated airspace too close... and if the big and medium guns went elsewhere, so much the better for a uncrowded hill.
I arrived just before sunset the night before; the breeze felt soarable, and the moon was almost full, but my bed called me. Mike was flying in the morning when I emerged at about 0800, reporting it not too lovely. But when I launched at 1023, it was not as strong, nor as rough, as the chat on the hill had suggested.
I resolved not to go over the back without good cause, and so pootled around, along and in front of the hill for a while. Eventually a climb appeared that was too steady, if not too strong, to abandon; I shared it with Polish Lester on a UP Edge and Czech Ludek on an Axis Polaris. Lester wandered off further west, but eventually I found myself chasing him with Ludek no longer around. I applied big ears a couple of times at base, but the suck was not huge.
My timidity with the bar hurt me as I arrived at Overton later and lower than Lester, and couldn't connect with his climb. A red kite saved me for a while, but lacked the concentration to make a really good XC pilot - it buggered off to have its lunch, I think. A dark field, a tractor and a flock of seagulls failed to give me a last-ditch save, and I came down at the edge of the ploughed field -- then had to scamper into the hedgerow as the cheery ploughman reduced the grassy edge still further.
After a fair wait, during which Crispin rang to say he was down nearby, I got a lift from a charming young mother, who was curious about my Glider Pilot Need Lift sign, and described herself as a hippy who gave lifts because it would give her karma - although she was an executive of a software firm and didn't look like a hippy at all. She dropped me at the A34, and after another longish w |
