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30/9/00 - Marcus King, 11.3km from Mere (RR)

TO Mere ST808339
LZ Nr Frome ST803452

Distance 11.2km
Glider MAC Feeling

It had been an on and off day, with cycles coming through, but often people would be forced to side land and some even went down to the bottom in particularly strong bits of sink. I had been sat chatting to Simon, and had just been moaning about the fact that I had never got away from Mere and how I was starting to get a tad pissed off with it. At that moment a few people took off and seemed to be doing a bit better so I joined them.

I headed to the bowl on the Eastern side and found a reasonable thermal, which I worked with a couple of others, it gradually drifted back but we weren't particularly rocketing skywards, only doing 2 up (100 ft/min). The others looked as though they were leaving it but I stayed with it past the point of no return. Guy Anderson rejoined me along with two others and we continued the slow climb out. The other two failed to keep with it with one going down near the gliding club and the other going down in the valley behind the hill.

By this time Guy and myself were on a glide towards the line of hills East of Long Knoll where we both found climbs. As we got to base the climb rate accelerated dramatically and I was worried about the size of the cloud and when I saw Guy disappearing with big ears on I followed suit. Guy then shot off to the West got a small climb but then seemed to go down heading towards Frome.

I was too far away to get his climb so glided over Longleat House to a bonfire beyond, but this gave me nothing, so I glided on till I forced to land somewhere near the Frome bypass. I think the cloud was basically killing everything around it, maybe we should have stayed on the edge of it, but it was a day of big clouds so maybe better to play it safe.

Marcus King