COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
of Buchan's boisterous wind. Until another sun trap - tucked away
behind some distant hill - betrayed its solitary thermal with a fragile
patch of cloud, brilliant white against the blue. Each one a chance of
survival.
On the run in I watched the variometer pistons as if they were the
stuff of life itself, and the altimeter unwinding - sweating in suspense.
Then a mighty surge of lift and the 419 swinging onto its beam ends
moving upwards and away.
Four times it happened. Those life giving wind shadow thermals
were like stepping stones, across the Mendips, under the southern
edges of the Quantocks and the Brendon Hills, and a last one near
Tiverton. Or so it seemed. For the brooding uplands of Dartmoor were
impossibly far away. Another thirty nail biting miles, until the Tors
south of Okehampton stood barring the way ahead. And then, hurdling
a lower ridge close to the town, less than a hundred feet above the top,
I ran slap into another great hiccuping upcurrent.
My watch read 4 o'clock. By now I had lost all sense of speed. It
hardly mattered. Sheer competitive instinct, and a remaining touch of
madness, were enough to keep me going:
"On! On!" The unspoken words were like a clarion call - "You're
almost there! Hunger, fatigue and the rest are for later!"
And as suddenly it was almost over. The next sun facing slope
produced one of the best thermals of the day. Two more giant strides
across Cornwall, another climb to over 4,000 ft north of Truro, and I
was final gliding towards the most westerly point in the Kingdom. The
cramped little fields, stone walls shadowed against the setting sun,
were a powerful reminder that Tony D2 had elected to fly the aircraft
in Poland. Perhaps later, when he heard the story, he would
understand.
For Anne and Harry it had been a traumatic day as well - as she
takes up the story in a letter to her sister in Canada.
At Las ham the conditions were so bad that no one made anything of
them until about 3.30 pm - when a few people managed to stay up for
half an hour..... Then the tug arrived back having had great difficulty
in getting more petrol. To our surprise he said that David had been on
his way since 11 am. Harry Midwood and I made a mad dash for the
car and trailer and set out on the long trek south west.
We travelled over Dartmoor with this long trailer - thirty four feet
of it. The narrow stone walled lanes gave me the willies and I excelled
myself by going over a narrow bridge too fast and the trailer wheel ran
186