Flying at the Blorenge

The weather looked ideal… Ben and I took the day off and at 6am we set off hoping to fly Pandy – in Wales. It took us about 3 hours to get there and to our dismay, when we arrived, we noticed in the site guide that Pandy was closed throughout May due to cattle grazing! DOH! We were not happy! So, we drove to the Blorenge where we met up with a couple of other pilots, including Steve from Axis Paragliding who had been doing some tandem flights. At first the wind was light so our flights were not long but the wind increased and I took off and was immediately catapulted skywards on my new Aspen II. It felt so crisp and precise. It tends to pitch back upon entering the thermals but I can get used to this.
I followed a kite in a thermal and soon found myself over the back of the hill. It was getting late so I decided to run for the car which was parked at the twin aerials. I landed just short in the ever increasing wind strength but happy with an hour or so of flying in the fresh air. Ben sadly snagged a brake line on a rock and broke it upon launching so not such a good day for him. A long way to go but if you don’t try you will never know what sort of day it could have been!I enjoyed playing with my new GPS connected to my vario and was impressed by the way it can tell me the wind direction in degrees. Very useful indeed. Still a lot more to learn but hoping for some XC flying sometime soon. Got back in time to put little Sebastian to bed and to relieve Diana. Thank you for letting me go! This is where I landed, amongst the springy heather not far from the car!