Well, we left early to travel up for the 2019 Lakes Charity Classic, on the road at 6.00 am with a 6 hour drive in front of us. We arrived in Grasmere to find beautiful sunshine, a reasonable breeze and just one wing flying, apparently it was a bit top end on Alcock Tarn, the site Cumbria club have permission to use just for the LCC.

A quick trip into Grasmere for lunch and then off up the hill. The showground at Grasmere is the festival venue and you can walk from there up to the Tarn but it's a fair walk for "Southern Softies" and I wanted to take my time and not be too knackered to fly.

I arrived on take off to find a whole heap of parawaiting going on, sprinkled with a fair amount of parabollox so I just joined in, and very pleasant it was too.

The wind gradually eased a tad, a few more launched and I decided it was time to join them. Fluffed the first take off but the Nyos settled down for the second attempt and away we went. Lovely thermals around, some with quite sharp edges at times and I radioed down to say it might be as well for some of the lower airtime guys to wait just a bit longer given that we had a lot of the day still ahead of us.

I had a lovely flight but found an hour enough, given our early start, the long drive and the fact that the comp proper started the following day and there was bound to be another big walk up or two - there was!