Interclub League - Saturday

Good morning,

The weather held out and allowed a good, but tricky, competition day on Saturday.

At Deeside we had:

Novice - Ron Ogston
Intermediate - Charlie Jordan
Pundit - Graham Holloway

The weather was broken thermals, 2-4knots with a cloudbase never higher than 3k feet.

The tasks were 2 hour assigned areas between 100-180km.

It soon became apparent it would be a struggle, and I spent almost 25mins trying to get away from Aboyne. However once into the Dee valley, the slopes were working well to provide constant bubbles of lift and maintaining height was quite easy.  I went middle distance in the 1st sector and met Geddes (my Highland rival) on the return journey. Once back in the Tarland bowl, I questioned whether heading to Rhynie would be a smart move - I had just heard Stuart Naylor in R1 landing out at the Turnpoint.

However, competing means pushing yourself, so I put thoughts of landing back at Aboyne out my head and had a good run into the TP picking up a decent 4 knot thermal over Mossat.

On the return journey, following the contours of the hills proved usefull and eventually scraped enough height to get over Press n Dye (is that how it is spelt?).

A straight glide around the final turnpoint - Lock Kinord - allowed a fast return home.

Unfortunately, Geddes was still going and had similar ideas! He had gone further in the 1st sector, and as the only two finishers, one of us had to lose. He beat me to the win.

A nice, tricky day in the hills that certainly required a bit of patience.