Drinking coffee, eating muesli and checking the weather revealed a fair few sites possible so a text from Dorita to say her and Quinton were off to Broughton with space for me in their hill climbing tonka truck brought the struggle to an obvious conclusion. High noon found me multi-tasking again loading my glider into said truck, putting on the suntan cream and gulping an early lunch.
Already at launch were two new people Allison and Alastair and after the usual pleasantries of introductions they took off to show us the air looked peachy. Cloud was bubbling earlier than it should and might over develop, but all the forecasts were saying don't worry about that, you have a nice day. And we did.
Trying out a demo harness, possibly inspired by playtex foundation garments meant getting into the pod was funny to all except me, but once in I am quickly happy to buy one. A bit of wandering up and down the slope saw Allison and Alastair climb out and head off followed in fairly quick time by me in a 3 or 4 m/s thermal and soon to base around 4200 ft. Odd there is wind enough to ridge soar on the hill but I am pretty much still above the hill with very little drift. Don't understand that. Quinton and Dorita stay with the hill. I head down wind feeling happy and point my toes at the other two. Allison is struggling manfully (she's in the navy) to stay airborne and Alistair is instructing her on the radio and for some reason I am with absent mind doing what she is told. A lot of wandering round between 2000 and 2500 ft follows and with Allison on the deck we meander off towards Peebles and radio up a retrieve to follow. So slick when you can do that.
Cademuir was where were going to get our next proper climb but it was just patrolling up and down at 2000 ft with lots of teasing but nothing solid and a gradual descending feeling. We both decided not to get too low and headed off in search of better. Alastair over Peebles and me downwind. More pleasant meandering but down was winning. The sun was shinning and landing 20 metres from my new friend didn't seem too bad and after a lazy bit of packing up two retrieve cars arrived with Quinton Dorita Linda and Allison and Alastair revealed they had also left a car parked in Peebles. Ice cream and tea all round on Peebles high street (no one was serving cucumber sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer) followed by driving back and up the hill for another go. Too windy, so off to the Leadburn for chips and beer in the sunshine. Nice, really nice but glad its not flyable the next day as its Derek and Sharron's wedding.
