Back at the Gibbet after our first attempts, good cycles were still coming through, and it hadn't, as feared, gone too easterly.
It took a while to get substantial height, and I declined a chance to go over the back at 2200 ASL. The next time I got to 3000 feet before feeling that I was committed, and to my delight the climb continued to over 5000. I worked it with a yellow Axis Vega, while a yellow Queen and a green Mentor climbed below us.
I glided after the Axis, but when he turned left I decided to keep going downwind. Eventually the Queen and Mentor caught me, and south of Andover we worked together. It always amazes me how close Southampton and the Solent look when you get good height south of Combe, but my instruments all made sense as we went through the Middle Wallop MATZ to the waypoint that I'd entered at King's Somborne.
I shouted to ask the Queen and Mentor pilots if they had radios, thinking they might, like me, be on the BCC chanel. Andreas, who it turned out was flying the Mentor, called back: "No - but can I help you with anything? " I was glad to be able to help him a little later by reassuring him that if we now kept heading for my destination at Blandford Forum, we'd stay clear of trouble.
All through the flight I'd been hearing the big cheeses of XC flying chatting on the radio as they approached somewhere from somewhere else a long way off. Now I began to hear Catherine, who must have been much nearer than I'd realised throughout the flight - Garry, too. But I think her statement that she was over Salisbury plain was, fortunately, a little wide of the mark.
Andreas got lower, while I met up with the Queen (the paraglider, not Her Majesty) again to climb back over 5000, as Andreas landed at the appropriately named Downton. I'd been staying north of a line on my Garmin, and had to make my final glide westward to continue doing so; in fact, the line was parallel to and north of the edge of Bournemouth station, so I could have glided with the wind south-west for an extra few kilometres, but I was very happy to see 50k pop up on my Syride before I landed at Rockbourne, picking the one of four convenient fields that had no horses in it.
Walking into the village, I found myself the only customer at the delightful Rose and Thistle. The charming barmaid was as helpful as can be, letting me use the landline to contact Garry and Catherine and the pub's wifi to post on the very helpful SW XC Retrieve group on Telegram.
Garry had had the good sense to land in a field where a hangie was packing up, and so got a lift back to Combe from the pilot's wife, and then nobly drove back to deepest Hampshire to pick up Catherine, Andreas and me (I still don't know who was on the Queen). The journey back to Combe was spoiled only by Andreas describing the delicious dinner he'd had at the pub in Downton, whereas the Rose and Thistle doesn't serve food on Sunday evenings. It was dark before we arrived, tired but happy, back at my van.
But what a day! The biggest in the history of the XC League, I hear. It's not often that you fly 59k and go DOWN the league. Still, I've overtaken Vincent in the Martini League, so I can only say to him: Where were you, loser?