My grand plan was to take Friday off, drive to Pandy from the Sussex / Kent border, park at the bottom, walk up and either go XC into the Beacons and camp, or just camp and do the XC bit the next day. I would also camp with my mate Rhun.
It’s good to have a plan, but I needed to modify it slightly. First the weather didn’t play ball, with it being forecast more north so Heol Senni was a better option. Rhun had to pull out of camping and I worked late on the Thursday, meaning I didn’t leave home until gone 10:00. With the bank holiday/ Friday traffic I got to the bottom of HS at 16:40 in time to see most people land, and to the top by 17:30. By the time I’d crammed my Vol Biv gear into my Advance Lightness 3 it was gone 18:00, so no XC for sure. I did however have some Earl Grey tea from Jon (I’d forgotten my tea), and the wind was on the hill for some evening soaring.
Heol Senni was lifty which was a good job as I weighed in at 105 kg with my tightly packed harness. I also had the place to myself, so spent an hour boating around up to 2200’ with some nice restitution to boot. I used this time to scout out perspective camping sites which was really useful to narrow them down as I’d originally planned to camp up top. I landed next to my car and found a great spot out of sight and away from livestock, with enough light to get set up and boil some water for my freeze dried chicken tikka with rice meal. Washing this down with some Penderyn whiskey I was ready for bed by 22:00, and had a pretty good nights sleep ready for some more flying adventures the following day.
