I came, I soar, I went.

Just time to catch up on this weekend before I disappear off on a weeks 'real' (non-gliding) holiday. I spent both Saturday and Sunday at the airfield, with a weather forecast that looked usable on both days. As it turned out, the forecast was a little bit backwards. Saturday Saturday looked like if anything were to happen, it would probably be after lunch and it would probably be thermal soaring. Glider pilots are optimists and also want to be high up on the flying list, so I arrived as I normally do, for the morning briefing. What followed was toasted fruit loaf and a cup of tea, whilst the two-seater fleet got going providing trial flights and lessons under a cloudless blue sky with relatively poor visibility, the likely result of an inversion that was keeping the warm air (and smog layer) trapped under a cooler layer above. At times, there were bands of strange grey cloud that appeared 'creased' - not the smooth wave type that we all want to be near...

It's been a while since I posted an update. This winter has been so bad that barely any flying has taken place at all, and it's much less available when you only have weekends to do it (it's really not worth using leave days from work!). We've had rain (lots of it), snow, wind (generally in the wrong direction) and thick, grey cloud cover that seems to have lasted for weeks at a time made even worse when your launch point is almost 1000' above sea level to start with. In January and February last year I'd clocked up around 20 launches - but by the same time in 2018, that number was just 2 or 3, with no real wave to speak of (because of the easterly winds that temporarily displaced our favoured and prevailing south-westerlies) and a lot of damp drizzle dissuaded anyone from their grand ideas of becoming airborne. In the UK, most gliding clubs operate due to varying amounts of goodwill from their membership - doing everything from launching, log keeping, o...