The day looked promising in Wales, was a Saturday and my partner was away so it was up at 5am to drive to Heol Seni where Peter and Jon were headed. On the way I found out that Rhun would also head there, so well worth the 4 hour drive.
I was first there at 10:30 and up the hill for 11:00, with Jon and Peter quickly hiking up just behind, and Rhun and his mate Andy soon after. The conditions were light thermic and actually dropped off when we got the wings out. Peter and Jon were first off, and got a couple of climbs above the ridge before landing again.
We were all dressed for cloudbase so were starting to get hot and this wasn’t helped by my first go ending up in a slope landing 2/3 the way down.
Peter was soon off again and up high where I lost sight of him. Rhun had also slope landed and when he got back up we launched about the same time, catching a thermal an overhead the quarry. I was relieved that it was half decent as the lower temperatures at 3500’ were most welcome.
We pushed out East together but with me having headset problems I could only hear and not be heard when transmitting, so Rhun thought better of following me far out front as he thought we’d bomb and have to walk back. I had more faith, and was thankfully rewarded with another climb whilst Rhun had to struggle valiantly back to the hill. He did though and his perseverance paid off with a nice XC down to Glanrhyd. I continued encountering a sailplane and then a lot of sink as I pushed into wind. I wanted to approach Pen y Fan from the North side rather than lee side, despite the light winds, and had to use full bar at one point in 3.5 m/s down. I got through it though and climbed to about 4000’ which meant I could fly onto the face with ease, looking down on lots of walkers. I didn’t pick up any further lift up top however so flew down the eastward spine down to about 2000’ before I found something that took me to 4500’. I could have headed over the back at that point but really wanted the challenge of getting back to Heol Seni, so headed into wind again. In hindsight a couple of km further north would have given me a point scoring FAI flat triangle, but the flight was much more than that. I picked up two further climbs that got be back to launch and my goal, and was well chuffed as that was my first Brecon Beacons out and return flight. Two hours of fun above stunning Welsh scenery.
Jon Munro did the same flight, and Peter got to Pen y Fan, after a re-launch flew all the way back home near Pontardawe!
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