BCC Round at Corndon Hill 18th May 2009

Day one of a two-day round of the BCC Competition hosted by Long Mynd club in Shropshire. The rendezvous was the Powis Arms pub in the beautiful village of Lydbury North, a few miles from the Long Mynd itself. There was a bit of a dampener on proceedings caused by the fatal accident the week before at Corndon Hill, the site which was to be used for the day's flying. The only thing that was said about it at the briefing was that preliminary enquiries suggested there was nothing "site-specific" to Corndon itself which had caused the accident.
Our team for the day (see photo) was Kevin Poole (captain), Ian Price, Nigel Dewdney, Alan MacDonald and Noel McGovern, with Stuart Mayson joining us to free fly and help with retrieves.
Conditions on the hill were rather strong, and a little north of easterly. After the site briefing, we followed the usual Malvern team tactic of lying around a lot and watching the wind dummies, then Ian decided it was time to join them. He took off and after a little scratching around in company found a nice thermal to whisk him up and over the back - and off to Llanidloes, nearly 40 km downwind! Kevin decided the wind had veered round to the south a bit and had some fun on his own being dragged uphill trying to take off round the corner before seeing sense and trying the main launch again - by which time most people had taken off.
While it was windy, there was not much dynamic lift and only occasional thermals (quite small and rough) so there was a lot of luck involved in staying up. Nigel, Alan and Noel were unlucky and Kevin managed a one-thermal splash and dash right at the end of the day, landing less than 5 km away next to Harry Tuffins supermarket at Church Stoke - but enough to register a small score!
Most of the gang headed home but the Long Mynd club were holding their annual social bash at the pub in Lydbury with camping next door, so there was beer, food and a bed for the night for the hard core socialisers. All very nice, but don't expect any mobile phone signal around there if you are on O2!!
At the time of posting, Malvern are running a respectable 8th in the competition - so some work needs to be done to get us into the top 6 and a slot in the finals in August!