Nice: -) I haven't had a wave flight for a few years. Fascinating, the almost imperceptible way that the thermal climb gave way to the light wave. It was pretty much always below 1m/s and more like 0.2m/s for most of the time up to 1150m. Strongest on Whernside a few hundred m in front of the hill and weakening by the time you're at the main road up through Ribblesdale. I'm collecting a few track logs now to see if I can map out the region at Whernside and Semer. Chris contacted it first and was trying to make his way across to Ingleborough, then went in the direction of Brant Side.

I was in it for an hour or so just weight shifting about with my hands in the pod pockets taking in the view. As the wave moved out of phase and died off OR the inversion started breaking meaning the thermals got higher I was proper nervous as some slight bumps started occurring. You get used to the glass smooth conditioms: -) There was a definite transition time after 2pm when everyone came mostly down out of the wave and had to start thermalling off the ridge again. This coincided with the wind increasing by 5km/h or so and thermal strength occasionally hitting 3m/s but not really worth taking because of the compression effects of the Whernside ridge. I think we could have flopped on to Gragareth later on but we may have got totally punished by the downside of the wave bar.

While up there, there seemed enough N-S extent and height available to start making me think about flying the wave bar north and sniffing out whether it was possible to fly XC toward Great Knoutberry, Hawes or Dodd at all. There was no wave bar cloud to give an obvious route though. It's a thought for next time…