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1/8/99 - Pete Taylor, 18.3km from Talybont Date: Sunday 1st August 1999 Sunday was a similar day to the Saturday, except on the way to Wales it was even more Pea Soupish. After driving to Talybont via the Blorenge (we were trying to find were the SE Wales BPC round was being flown), we started the enormous hike to the back of Talybont (memorial), only to be shown the proper way by Nick Thomas (SW wales) as he thermaled up from the car park take-off and flew over the BPC guys at over 1000ft ato. The BPC guys were taking off from the SW'ly spur looking out over the reservoir. Clouds were forming as we watched several guys commit over the back at ridiculous heights 100-200ft ato. The wind was quite strong from the South 18-20 m.p.h. Alex took off in a lull and after some 15-20 minutes in the gnarly conditions left in a reasonable thermal, during this time myself and some of the SW Wales chaps stayed on the deck as it was gusting to 25m.p.h in the compression. Eventually I took off in a lull (no one followed me, suckers!). I found the thermal to take me over the back just near the memorial. This prompted several pilots to lob off and follow me, but by the time they reached the thermal I was 800-1000ft ato over the back and only one guy connected properly and followed me over. The rest were decked before they left the high ground. Out in front of me I could see several BPC pilots over Brecon and beyond, after becoming frustrated with my progress towards Brecon (the thermals were quite broken and multi-cored) I decided to red line it to the Barracks in Brecon, where I could see someone slowly working something. The climb over the Barracks turned out to be the best one of the day, taking me to 4800ft amsl, but still 500ft below cloudbase. I tracked due north towards a large aerial in the woods north of Brecon, but found nothing on the way, so upon reaching the Aerial I turned to track West towards a fort on some high ground (with a nice cloud street behind) but after almost 3km crosswind I found nothing and landed in the valley near the B4520 between Upper Chapel and Lower Chapel. On reflection I should have booted it down-wind into the boonies, as the BPC pilots were well on their way to goal at Builth Wells. If I could have made two more climbs I would have made goal as well (around 10 pilots made goal). Canopy - Advance Epsilon 2 |
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