| Comments | :: | Milk Hill to Henley on Thames - 70km Goal flight It looked windy on the way to Milk, but was suprisingly light on arrival. A couple of paragliders were scuffing around in the bowl and nobody in the air on Rybury, even though there were lots of cars parked at the bottom. The breeze picked up while I rigged the HG and PG's were doing better, so I set myself a goal at Henley on Thames and launched. Turned out to be quite lively, with small strong cores that fell apart as quickly as they formed. I could not quite hang in the climbs long enough to get away and the wind strength varied from strong to barely enough to stay up. I landed for a rest after an hour or so of fairly physical exercise. A bit later a good looking set of clouds were approaching and the lone PG flying started to gain height, so I tried again. Much smoother climbs this time and was able to head over the back pretty quickly. A friendly peregrine helped me to find a nice climb at Lockeridge, then had a reasonable run to Aldbourne. I had to take a slow climb here, but once north of the M4 it got really easy. 85km/hr ground speed and dolphin flying cloud to cloud to Pangbourne. East of the Thames I had to take a dogleg north, out of the lift, to get low enough to get under the airspace, then final glided to Henley. In retrospect I should have set a bigger goal further north, but that's the power of hindsight! |
