Advance paragliders in the West Country

So, I’ve been out on three or four good days this year, and it’s been Wales that has delivered every time… Maybe I’m just being drawn to the bigger hills which offer an opportunity for a good hike up, or maybe it’s just where RASP is indicating the best conditions, but whatever, I’ve had a lot of fun!

First was a short but fun XC from Merthyr on 17th February, then a month later on 13th March I was back at Merthyr again and had a cracking 85km flight to near Tewkesbury:

Roll on another two weeks to Sunday 25th March, and Hundred House was the starting point for a great adventure across the Brecon Beacons to the coast at Porthcawl. The highlights were soaring Pen-y-Fan before climbing out and getting to 7,850′ farther on!

Check out the video here:

Finally (for now), Thursday 5th April (and no, I haven’t seen the sun since then, it’s been such a crap week or more) involved a decent hike up Magic Mountain (now an official SEW site), a spot of parawaiting, then a 40km flight in first blue then later hazy conditions, landing at Fforest Fields campsite (aka Hundred House).

This was my first flight on my new(ish) Omega X-Alps 2, and if this was anything to go on, I’m going to have some great adventures on it!

Despite landing at just after 3pm I didn’t get home until about 11.30pm – my buddy Mike Humphries went “missing” for four hours so we had a bit of fun and games trying to track him down. Long story short, unbeknown to me we’d been flying together (he’d changed his helmet recently meaning that I didn’t recognise him in the air) and after I’d landed he went on to fly another 10kms, landing just past Llandrindod Wells. All well and good, but his phone had completely died (yes, not just battery problems), and so he was out of contact until he borrowed a stranger’s phone and eventually got hold of me at 8pm, by which time I was well over half way home (in his car)! He had no prospect of getting back home that evening by train, so I turned around, crossed the Severn for the second time that day, and eventually met him in Crickhowell… Ah well, all’s well that ends well, and in actual fact we all learned something that day, which I’ve summarised here.

So… where will the next adventure be? Can Wales deliver for a fifth time? We shall see!