Rough Air at the Devil's Dyke

The forecast for the Devil's Dyke hinted the wind would veer more to a north easterly and drop later in the day. When I arrived, the wind was pretty strong, blowing a good 17 mph from the north [possibly with a hint of east in it]. I wasn't totally inspired to rig my glider and John and I wondered if Bo Peep might have been the better option. We debated between ourselves and decided to rig.

After I’d posed for photographs for tourists from India, Cara assisted me to the north end of the pub spur. The wind was still quite off to the north and I decided this would make for the safest launch. John was already airborne and struggled in marginal lift, but once he spotted I was ready, he quickly headed towards the bowl to clear some space for me to launch.

After launch, I turned left towards the main bowl. With a northerly wind I considered the pub spur be in the shadow of the wind so didn't want to hang around there. As soon as I arrived at the bowl I encountered my first notable lift and climbed to no more than 100 feet above take-off.

The majority of my flight was conducted on the north-facing ridge. Several times I made it as far as the pylons, but with the weak conditions and the lift appearing to get weaker and weaker, I dared not venture across for fear of not making it back.

After 20 minutes of flying in some very rough bits of air, I noticed that paragliders had begun to launch. The wind had dropped off and two hang gliders had already landed at the bottom.

With the an increased number of paragliders now airborne and me not being so confident flying with them, I was soon out of the lift band and headed down to the bottom landing field. As soon as I was below ridge height I hit some really nasty air putting my glider into quite a steep right hand bank which turned me towards the hill. After I had remedied that [skipped a few heart beats], I decided to keep well away from the pub spur as serious rotor was kicking off from it with the wind for far around to the north! Lesson learned!

As I began my final approach I stuffed the bar as I wanted as much speed as possible for a good safety margin. With one hand on the upright and the other on the base bar I maintained good control and skimmed across the crop. 20 meters short of the 'official' landing spot I felt the onset of the flare sweet spot. I aggressively flared and landed with a perfect no stepped landing... but in the crop! Fortunately the crop was only 1 foot high and I was able to gently tip-toe across it until I was in the de-rigging area.

Soon after I was joined by another hang glider pilot, followed by a paraglider pilot. The wind had now dropped off and the sky was filled with paragliders which concluded my flying!