Flying in the Lake District - Aug / Sep 2010

View from Latrigg looking SW over Keswick and Derwent Water.

Towards the end of August I had this great idea to take my gliders up to the Lake District and fly them on the slopes of some seriously big mountains.

Great Gable (899m) is perhaps the most iconic of all mountains in this National Park; a flight from its summit would be the crowning moment of the week, weather permitting of course!

With such a vast mountainous area over which to fly, I needed to study Ordnance Survey maps for suitable flying sites to accommodate the various wind directions.  A Cumbrian paragliding website listed 39 good flying sites; hills, mountains, with wind directions;  it made sense to mark these sites on my maps with labels and draw up a chart of the sites so I'd have a pre-organised system for slope selection for when up there.

By good fortune, a week of sunshine was forecast for Cumbria, so I packed the camping gear and went.

Camp 1 was at Castlerigg near Keswick with a view over Derwent Water.  The idea was to stay at a different camp site each night.

Great Mell Fell as seen from Latrigg - 7 miles away.

Day 1 started off with a mild northerly wind.  There was an interesting hill nearby called  Great Mell Fell (537m) which looked like it might be fun to fly off, but a curious lack of wind at the top meant I barely stayed an hour up there before heading 7 miles west to Latrigg (368m), a popular hill overlooking Keswick.  The wind was by now blowing gently from the west and I flew the EasyGlider on what turned out to be one of the best flights of the holiday with views that were absolutely splendid!  I must have flown half a mile away towards the Skiddaw massif, at which distance the plane becomes a tiny white dot.  Definitely one of my best flights ever, and all recorded in glorious HD.

View from Latrigg looking west towards Bassenthwaite Lake - the tiny speck in the centre of the sky is my glider.

Camp 2 was at Braithwaite with a wonderful view looking across to Dodd Wood hill and Skiddaw in the background.
Camp 3 was at Buttermere.
Camp 4 was at Seathwaite Farm which would be base-camp for the trek up Great Gable the next day.

The summit of Great Gable poses interesting challenges for the model aviator.  For one thing, there is nowhere to land as the summit is covered in boulders; this means having to catch planes by hand, a tricky challenge at the best of times, only facilitated by light winds.
The basic plan was to take just the EasyGlider up to the summit, but the wind was very light and I didn't want to get all the way up there, launch and then find that there wasn't enough lift to get the plane back.  This meant I'd need to take a powered glider as a reserve plane.
So up I went with a glider in each hand, which turned out to be easier than I thought it would be, especially since the air was so still and there were no crosswinds.  After a 2½ hour climb, I reached the rounded summit.  The wind was so light that I couldn't risk launching the EasyGlider, so it had to remain grounded while I flew the Multiplex EasyStar over the south face for the best part of an hour, complete with on-board camera; most of the time slope soaring but I had the power option for the moments when I needed it.
This was a flight of truly epic proportions! The vastness of the surrounding valleys made it all quite surreal and probably the most memorable flight of all time.  Another 2½ hours later I arrived back down at base-camp as darkness fell, mission successfully accomplished.

View from Great Gable looking NW.

Ennerdale valley and forest in background.

Launching from summit of Great Gable, facing SW towards Wast Water.

Flying over the summit of Great Gable.

Landing approach.

Flying over Derwent Water - looking towards the northern mountains of the Lake District with their highest peak Skiddaw at 931m.

Flying over Derwent Water - Walla Crag (376m) rises to the right.

Camp 5 was at Chapel Stile, 2 miles SW of Grasmere.

Loughrigg Fell (335m) looks over Grasmere Lake, a real beauty spot that Wordsworth, I believe, described as one of the finest views in all of England.  This was a site that beckoned to be flown.  It would have been lovely to have had a NW wind to soar this slope overlooking the lake, but unfortunately the wind had other ideas, so I had to make do with a powered flight.

Grasmere Lake from Loughrigg Fell.