Well I suppose it was down to me to write up the day at Witchie Knowe since it’s judged that I had the best of the day out of the five of us that flew.
First thing in the morning I’m in touch with Dave H about site selection, as I was concerned that it may not have been the best place to go for the forecast. I now have to swallow my words and say, “good shout Dave”. So with arrangements made we made our own ways to meet up Rob, Tommy and Stuart.
When we arrive at take off, it was a blue thermal day and it had quite a strong wind blowing up the face, in fact too strong to launch, so a lot of oohing and aahing naturally followed. Later to discover it was a massive thermal and the site then settled into a regular thermic cycle.
Keen to get off I was to launch first and made an a**e of it, somehow managed to miss time the cycles and ended running back with a fully inflated glider. Well that wasn’t the end of my launching antics as at one stage I had turned the glider inside out through the lines nightmare thanks to Dave and Tommy for the assistance getting it all untangled. Everyone else seemed to get off ok with Rob leading the way with an impressive climb out. Remember thinking to myself “that’s where I want to be”. Anyway no more drama’s and I got away clean.
The guy’s were bang on with their comments it was quite lumpy and you had to be on your game to hang onto the bitty, punchy, broken thermals that were floating up the glen, and at the same time be on your toes when you fell out of them. So many times I fell out the other side as I climbed out, but as I gained height I forgot about the ground with the knowledge that I had a fair bit of space between me and the hard stuff. I heard later that a couple of them had minor incidents as they were caught out.
Other than being on a roller coaster the climb out continued to 5,500 ft limit and I was away on a glide north ticking off Innerleithen en-route, next target was Peebles, and I then change my mind as it would have been an easy glide in, as I could see Tinto in the distance, mind made up that was to be the new end game. With that set I started crabbing across the Borders hill tops heading NW with the plan to hopefully fly over the Coulter Fell group pick up my last climb for a final glide onto Tinto.
Got a second climb to the maximum over Dun Rig and I was off again. Then my luck ran out as I headed towards Pykestone hill (Sits North of Dollar Law ) I hit major sink and just managed to fly over Manor Glen to reach one of Pykestone Hill’s lower spurs then that was it, it was all over within a couple of minutes I found myself setting up for the inevitable. Anyway after packing up headed back to the car, two lifts, a bus ride later (Via Innerleithen ice cream shop) I was back at the Gordon arms in the car and heading home.
A couple of photos of the day enclosed and I took the liberty of taking a picture of the sign hung up on the Gordon arms if anyone would like to help out getting it back on it’s feet again.
We liked going there for a drink after a day out and it was a shame when it burnt down earlier in the year.
Sean
Flight
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