After Thursday's bomb-out from the Blorenge, I wasn't feeling too optimistic. But there was a lot more wind, which made it possible to stay in the air comfortably. On my way to find a climb that Viv was marking out to the left, I stumbled into a better one and found myself climbing out with a gaggle of seven or eight.

Still expecting a nasty stable day, I feared that it might be too early, but also thought it might be a rare chance, so stuck with it. It proved to be the right decision as we rose in stages to over 4,500 feet, and spread out in search of more lift. We drifted quite a way without going up or down much, and then the gang set off on a glide to Hereford.

I hadn't quite absorbed the fact that we were easily high enough to fly right over the prohibited area, so I kept south to skirt around it. By good luck this took me into some great lift, but beyond the city I ran out of good clouds and thermals, and came down in a fair bit of wind on a farm at Peterchurch. Almost all the fields had sheep in them, and the one that didn't had big power lines, but it was wide enough to land comfortably at the other side.

A carpenter going home to Abergavenny picked me up almost immediately, and kindly went out of his way to drop me at the junction with the main road. After a bit of a wait there, an old man taking his grandson to his nan's (the lad's nan, I assume, not the old man's) took me into Hereford. At the station I found Ollie and a few others who had flown to Hay. A much better day out that I'd expected.