| Comments | :: | Milk Hill to Ashampstead - About 60km. Milk was pretty quiet again as the hoards were on Rybury. Just me on the HG and two or three PG's. It's nice to have some markers upwind to show when the air is getting good! A flock of seagulls thermalling back into the bowl tempted me off the hill, but I was considering landing again until I saw the PG's climbing out from Rybury. A few went past until I found a decent climb over the west facing spur, then it was up to base and off downwind. With no retrieve organised (again!) I had two goals in mind:- 1)Get at least 40km to try and get the top spot in the national HG league. 2)Land where I could get an easy way back to the hill. Luckily my sister lives 50km downwind so that was where I was aiming for. There was a lot of spreadout down the valley towards Newbury, so I tracked north from Savernake to the M4 north of Hungerford, then ran parallel with it to my goal. Typically the sky got much better as I circled over my sisters house, so I did a small triangle around the area before heading in for a cold drink and a lift back to the hill. Some really good climbs made it possible to push upwind, despite 30km/hr+ drift at times. Back at Milk it seemed a lot more mellow, so I dragged my ancient PG out for a boat about before going home. It was nice to see people still heading over the back from Rybury at 5.30pm. Thanks to Chris, Ian and Martin for volunteering as take off witnesses when I forgot to sort that out before flying. |
