I was up for it today and in a postive mood, unlike the day before when too tired to get the wing out of the bag. Sleep really is the most important pre flight routine.

Anyway, tried and had a slope landing but was still itching and once someone else launched and stayed up in an obviuos thermal lift i was off and led the climb straight out for 6 of us. Lovely. I was then first off on the glide to the first of the equilateral triangle 75 k tpts for goal that most had declared. Howver i struggled as usual and was really slow, after an hour only 7k from launch. Had a nice bit of help ftrom Bryan, but I think he got bored with my slow progress vertically and left me behind. Most of the rest of the flight was on my own but always with other gliders in front or behind me in the distance. Pretty well blue almost the whole time, any clouds if attempted faded away before i arrived. Caught up with a couple of gliders near Hereford and tagged along which was really nice. Had to make a decision heading for second turnpoint, and chose to go for lift above big wheat field off track, the other glidr went straight for tpt, got it then came in under me but very low and never quite made it back up.

Meanwhile i was patiently waiting to see them start a goid climb so that i could nip off 2k to bag tpt and return to rejoin the lift. Had to do it anyway which turned out ok but then made the one big mistake of the day. I had a choice to either go straight home via Much Marcle ridge and a lot of greenery, or retrace my route back to Hereford, I chose the former and had sink bad nough to mean i was unlikely to get over the ridge and onto the big wheat fields. I turned off to try some small fields and the last one at less than 300ft nearly got me up but I didnt core it well enough and the now moderate north wind drifted me over woodland so gave up and popped in a field.

Failing in the task, taught me lots of lessons and the social retrieve nearly made up for missing an extra 140 tesco points.