COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
the top, running close to a group of houses which clung precariously
to the hillside, there was a faint burble of lift. It took an age, gyrating
suicidally close to the roof tops which straggled upwards in the murk,
until that weak and hesitant upcurrent eventually carried me out of
danger.
After that conditions improved by leaps and bounds. Cumulus
blossomed, the thermals grew strong, and the high plateaux and long
valleys of the Jura vanished from sight as the 419 was drawn up into
cloud.
Those thermals over the Jura developed into a series of massive
storms, which carried me into the mountains south of Lake Geneva,
towards Chamonix and Mont Blanc.
On landing, as a matter of principle, I made my way to the most
imposing property in sight, and ended up in strange company. My
generous hosts provided a most welcome bath, a temporary change of
clothing, and an invitation to dinner. From their conversation they
appeared to be a bunch of international financiers and their ladies,
American, French and Swiss. All spoke excellent English, and soon,
what with their hospitality and my long day in the air, it became
difficult to sort out the various nationalities.
But I was not too tired to detect the atmosphere of tension, not to
say menace, which haunted the dinner table. As if they were utterly
dependent on one another and yet hated each others' guts. Afterwards,
with no sign of my crew, I accepted the offer of a bed. But sleep did
not come easily, after that sinister dinner party, quite apart from the
incessant rumbles of thunder and worrying about Anne and Harry.
At that moment the two of them were struggling in torrential rain,
trying to make a 'U' turn on a mountain hairpin. They managed in the
end - by chocking the trailer wheels with a tool box, unhitching it and
swinging it round by hand - and by some miracle the whole thing
failed to go over the edge and into the valley below. Safely past that
hazard they arrived at last in a crescendo of headlights and engine
noise, and the guard dogs went berserk, but my financiers slept on.
Perhaps they were already dead, in a orgy of mutual poisoning which
I had somehow escaped!
Our arrival back at St Yan coincided with briefing and there was
a mad rush to get ready in time for the next task. Only to find that one
of the ailerons had been damaged by a stone on landing the previous
evening.
Harry, who had been feeling unwell for several days, missed his
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