Anyway we were here to fly and with a good forecast a flight to goal was set to Evesham 108 km away. At first the wind was light and variable and paragliders could barely stay up on the odd thermal drifting through.
Gordon Rigg decided to launch and after a small climb gradually hooked something decent and within a few minutes was off downwind. This seemed to motivate a lot of pilots and two gaggles took off and headed to the quarry left of launch. Meanwhile I was still slightly concussed from the night before I realized that me Tony Lucchesi and John Vernon were the only ones left on launch. Tony took off headed straight to the quarry and climbed out quickly. This galvanized me to launch and head the same way, straight above the quarry and into a 2m/s thermal. Above me I could see Tony climbing up and behind in the next valley a gaggle of paragliders and hanggliders were milling about searching for the next thermal beyond in the valley behind (Ebbw Vale) gliders could just be made out circling in lift on the radio I could hear that the leaders were at the Blorenge mountain, about 20km away. Time to get a move on!. Below I could see one or two gliders that had dropped out, thank god I wont be last anyway.
