Old Dog New Site # The Fox and the Buzzard.

5 star forecast, potentially too windy in the mountains?

My nearest site is the Ochils. Just north of Stirling and a great place to fly. I opted to launch from Seemab Hill, at the extreme east end of the range. An easy walk up and nice grassy launch.

A fantastic sky already at 11 o'clock and it remained fantastic with entirely predictable climbs for the entire flight. Except when there weren't.

With a fairly low cloudbase and some breeze, it felt like the decision to stay low and local was a good one?

I scrambled and scratched my way along to Dollar and hooked up with the local pros. Lambert and Tim B.

Not long before Tim streaked past and left me to dither about just above the wooded slope west of Tillicoultry. Enter stage left. The fox, a cub I think. Funniest thing I'd seen all day. It hared about the slope for the next 10 mins. Not alone mind you. As if it were attached by a string, a buzzard shadowed and harried the poor little cub up hill and down dale, before it eventually found cover.

I moved on, found a climb and eventually caught up with Tim over Myerton. And then he left me for dead again.

Nearly at the west end of the Ochils and no obvious climbs or clouds. Time to turn round and try to soar along Dumyat Hill. Very nearly over cooked it, but with the help of Tim got back to a climb over Myerton.

It took a fair few climbs and a lot of scrambling to get back to Dollar. A good thousand feet below Tim for most of the way. East of Dollar not so easy for me. Almost on the deck and having to perform acrobatics to stay off the ground and in the lift.

Anyhoo, made it back to Seemab. Soup in the pub in the Pool of Muckhart. What a mouthful. Delicious.

In other news. Tim closed out a cracking triangle and not so windy up north where Jules and the Aberdeen team had cracking flights.