A photo of me?

Just came across this image of me flying at Rushup last week on another website. See the photo in-situ on the UK Climbing Website: http://www.ukclimbing.com/images/dbpage.html?id=77339

The wonder of networked living!

Rushup Edge - 13th December 2007

I'd almost given up any thought of flying before the end of the year. Every weekend I'm free it seemed to either be howling a gale or pouring with rain. This week though an area of high pressure settled over the UK giving light southerlies so checking every forecast on the web I booked the day off work at the last minute and the following morning left home at 7am headed for Rushup.

I arrived about 10.30am surprised to find no-one in the air and only a few cars in the car park. It seemed highly flyable and so I made my way up on to the ridge. The wind was between 10 and 12mph and all seemed fine. I took off second go after a mild dragging on my first attempt (wing came up asymmetrically) and soared around for 5 minutes or so before being forced into a slope landing as I slowly lost height. The air was smooth enough but had areas of lift closely followed by sink. Kind of weird - it was smooth lift followed by very smooth sink - almost like sets of stairs in the air mass. I'd not flown in such un-predictable conditions before and they seemed especially strange as the wind on the hill was so consistent. Was this some mini wave effect I wondered. There were some wave-ish bars of cloud in the sky to the south west but I didn't think that would affect me below the top of the ridge.

Slogging back up the hill saw me disintegrating into a sweaty state of near collapse at several points before I got back to take-off. I sat down for half an hour to recover and to re-assess conditions. Why had I gone down when the wind was so consistent? It was a little bit off to the West but no more than when I was here in October.

A couple of other pilots arrived after a while - one a willing wind dummy so I got to wait and see if things had improved. They had! We all took off soon after and spent a very pleasant hour or so wafting around in the smooth, light conditions.

At the end of the day the sunlight broke through the clouds and illuminated the hillside and I followed Mat along the ridge and down to the landing field with a number of hill walkers photographing us as we flew past them. A great end to the day where the temperatures never got above 3^oC.

See more photos on flickr

Rushup Edge - 21st October 2007

At last I've made it to the Peak District. Having spent many years climbing and walking in the peaks I know many of the sites quite well from the ground so it was lovely to fly one of them at last. I got a lift up with Keith and Tanya (thanks guys) and driving towards the site we could see a few gliders in the air. The walk up was a lot shorter than it looked and I met Adam, another Dunstable member on the way up.

Had a lovely day flying the ridge from one end to the other and back. It was fairly light conditions but it was relaxed flying, great views and nice to see so many gliders in the air - don't they look pretty! I also met up with Andy who I met in Greece back in May this year.

Can't wait for another opportuntity to fly in the peaks, but with winter coming it may be some time.

See more photos on flickr