I used the excellent Wiltshire Connect bus service to get up to Pewsey Downs car park; having made the booking to await Stephen Gray's arrival by train, we got there about noon, and I feared that massive gaggles would fly over our heads as we walked up to the bowl.

But the masses were still there. Clearly it was going to be very busy when climbs appeared, so I sat out the first big gaggle's departure (although Stephen rigged quicky and left with it). It was then hard work for the next 90 minutes, with first too much shade and then a blue hole, although a few more got up from the spur.

Finally decent cumulus started to appear again, and Glyn and others showed that it was getting lifty. I launched and pushed slightly forward under a few climbing gliders, and soon I was on my way, with only a blue Epsilon coming with me, possibly flown by Tim Crozier-Cole. The initial climb was in the roughest air that I've flown in for years - I got a collapse, which my Calypso dealt with calmly. But, having thought that I'd missed the cross-country bus, I was determined to stay with it, even if led only to a three-kilometre walk back.

We diverged a bit as we searched for better lift, and the Epsilon found a nice climb that was very smooth and took us to base at the A4. As we both pulled in big ears, I lost sight of him and never saw him again. I then found myself under complete shade, and sank steadily until I'd almost reached Aldbourne. I thought there'd be a bus from there, and I was reasonably happy with 20k so late in the day and the season.

But I found a bit of lift, and I suddenly thought: "This could be the last thermal that I fly in for several months! " So I stuck with it, deciding not to bother about retrieve options. The climb was slow but persistent up to over 3,000, and was followed by a long period of zeroes.

By then I was approaching the Ridgeway, and had begun to hope I might reach Didcot for an easy retrieve, but a few last bubbles got me only to the field before the road from the Harwell research centre to Harwell village. I messaged Jim, who'd already got a lift to Didcot station, about the chance of making his train, but the bus from Harwell arrived four minutes too late. I jumped on the next stopping train to Reading - and got off the escalator at platform 7 just as the Pewsey train moved off, with Jim and three other pilots on it.

That would normally have meant a two-and-a-half-hour wait in Reading - but the last Pewsey train was cancelled, so I travelled via Swindon and Westbury, which took almost as long, and arrived just in time to walk down Pewsey High Street as the crowds awaited the carnival procession. September 2023 is turning out almost as good as September 2022.