1st Day of the second Gradient British Record Encampment. Drove at high speed from the Highands the night before. Stayed overnight in Bishops Castle but woke to find it was seriously windy already and NNW. A quick drive up the Mynd at 10am confirmed that it was already blown. Judith and Geoff had suggested that we take a look at Long Mountain, a Beyond Extreme training site and suited to strong winds. A few BCC hangers on including Ken Wilkinson had already flown. I launched in a lull and soared around, watching a great cloud steet developed towards the hill. Unfortunately, it migrated to the north, I pursued it along the ridge but didn't find any strong cores, on the way back I hit 4 knots of solid lift and wound it up with Kai Coleman coming in underneath me. Despite a large mass of cloud above us, the climb became punchy and we yoyo'd around each other. Mark Jones had found a much better climb from the ridge and we pushed upwind to join and climbed to base. We flew as a team for the next 3 hours. Drift aloft was initially 25kph NW slowly increasing as we progressed eastwards. Initially climbs were very broken and rough and it took 3 pilots searching a large area to get back up. Approaching the Mynd, I knew that we needed to be high before we crossed, luckily, a circling sailplane and a cloud developing upwind, got us up again. Mark and Kai forged ahead with a long glide over Wenlock Edge. I decided to top up before following as I have got low here many times. We still all ended up scrabbling to the south of Titterstone Clee where I managed to get 1000ft higher than the others and kept that advantage for the next 50km. High cover started encroaching from the west, with (forecast) blue conditions to the east. At Bredon Hill we split with Kai pushing south and me continuing east. I dropped into a different airmass and the air around Evesham was horribly choppy and rough without any good average climbs. The CU became thin based and it was obviouse that the wind had picked up significantly. I found a weak but smoother climb on the Cotswold Edge that got me safely over the high ground. Mark Jones came in beneath me but wasn't so lucky and choose the safe decision to land before the escarpment (112km). I should have been more patient in the weak climb but pushed onto some scrappy CU towards Moreton in the Marsh and with the sunlight blocked by increasingy thick cirrus, ended up on final glide near Stow. The wind picked up closer to the ground and I registered 80kph downwind. I landed going backwards in a linseed crop. Too much like South Africa for my liking! A great call by Judith, thanks and almost the Record Day. In hindsight, if we had flown on the line to Cirencester and stayed in the better airmass, even though it was shaded, we would have broken the British Record. Kai was stopped by Brize airspace at 140km. Martin Knight flew 130km for his first UK 100km, landing 1hr and 20 mins after us in the same area.