My first UK xc this year and feels like it's been a long time coming. Admittedly I had not done any planning or checked the weather at all as I was away the previous day at a family get together. Maybe I should do this more often.
We had a shortened run way already on the short runway due to the bogginess of the field. I still got 1100 ft off tow, the upper winds were meant to to be stronger and I knew already that the wind speed were supposed to be picking up in the afternoon.
This was also my first use of my recently upgraded oldie 4 so was hoping to get a few little beeps eventhough the sky over us was fairly milky with high cirrus. Although you could see a few small cumulus in the distance just not down wind. I got a few bleeps and thought I would try and work the zeros +. 1 lift which soon had me outside of our tow field. I would not normally go with something this week and low but figured the wind would stop play quickly and there being a few pilots in the queue I doubt I would very another flight in so just went with it expecting that I might have to walk a few field back.
I was covering ground quickly but not climbing very much and with the ESE wind the drift took me straight through the pan handle of Marham matz. Having already spoken to someone about this we noted well it's a Sunday afternoon and we haven't see any military planes fly over. I was still climbing slowly and got to 1800 ft in the middle of the pan handle. I left there to glide to the other side which was about 6km away, after a short glide and down to 1100 ft I found another climb a bit more substantial which got me just short of 2ooo ft and 400m of the edge of the pan handle. (I will always avoid the matz, but if I wanted to get away I had no choice today, but I swear I was hearing Jets and planes everywhere around me, the mind can play some funny tricks on you)
I got particularly low about half way down to approx 550 agl when I found a climb over a woodland with two buzzards, a first to climb consistently with these for quite can few minutes. I got to about 2300 and with the wash now looking with in gliding distance and could now feel the wind strength had picked up I left the climb. Also being honest I wasn't sure why it felt so easy to climb compared to the rest of the day. I made a detour of my current heading to get to Kings Lynn rather than a little village miles from nowhere, plus one of the guys at the field declared Kings Lynn as so if he had got away we would be in the same vicinity.
I went to land in the rugby club but realised how windy it was and had to pick the field behind which was now looking more like Marsh land and was worried how wet it would be, but it was all good.
Quickly finding out Ben had also got away some 15min after me and some 8km behind be arranged for his dad to pick me up before collecting Ben and taking us back to our cars. Result. I didn't even wait a minute for my retrieve.
I appreciate it small scale in terms of a lot of flights here but very satisfying for me and another xc to add to the bag of experience.