Flight

Once more, I had Bo Peep all to myself. I'm starting to think that everyone's trying to avoid me.... One P/G was leaving just as I arrived at 2:15 and it was sea-breezing from the east with blue skies out to the east and south over the sea. As the forecast was for it to strengthen a little, I decided to rig up and see how it went. Just as I was finishing rigging John Barratt turned up just to see if anyone was flying, so I had some company for 10 mins. before he had to leave on business. The sea-breeze had been pushed back by then and there were clouds over-developing above take-off. I took off at 15:35 and had 55 mins. of boring soaring under a large area of spreadout, never getting much above 400' a.t.o., going along the ridge between the Alfriston end to the east, and the bowl before the trig. point to the west. There was no one else in the air apart from a model flier. At 4:30 the sun came out and better thermals were beginning to come through. As I was gradually getting higher I noticed that the model was thermalling above a buzzard and so I headed that way. As I flew towards it, the model dived away, as if he were marking the thermal for me on purpose. Cheers to the modeler if this was deliberate! I started to climb in this and then felt my way upwind to get the strongest core. After climbing to 2300' (about 600' short of cloudbase) I was under a continuous cloudstreet stretching upwind. It seemed pointless to drift back any further in the climb so I pulled on the VB and headed forwards in the smooth wide area of lift, confident that I would make it to the reservoir. The wind was too strong and I got to the end of the cloudstreet, and lift, after 3 mins. of flying upwind; before I'd even crossed the railway-line, so I headed crosswind towards Wilmington, where the next street was, and caught another very large, smooth thermal which I drifted with to Alfriston, arriving with 1900'. Then it was just a glide back to the chalk bowl for a top-landing. A very pleasa