Narrative

BCC 2024 Round Four – Saturday 2 August 2024 – The Long Mynd

Ladies and Gentlemen

I am crafting this dialogue as our fellow BCCers are in the process of climbing up the slopes of the Brecon Beacons to ascend Talybont in order to get today’s round underway. However, we do still need to rewind the clock to last weekend and the epic round at the Long Mynd. Before I get to the scores, I must express my sincere thanks go to James Allcock for stepping up to the plate on behalf of the Long Mynd Soaring Club for both setting up and delivering a round to remember. Here’s to more of those please before the season is out; if you’ve not organised a round yet, please just ask any of those who have before; it does require some work of course, but that just adds to the sense of satisfaction at the end of the day.

As per earlier rounds, we have been asked by Joe from Skywings, now ably assisted by Viv Fouracre as the Comp Lines Rep, for a full write up from someone who was there please, so I won’t attempt to do a poor version of that here, other than reflecting on a classic Long Mynd, which offered something for everyone. To that end the stats certainly show a good return on the opportunity created by James and co with 36 of the 45 pilots who took part posting scores and almost half of those earning Personal Development Prizes; one of which was a First Ever XC (I always love to see as you know), one was a First UK XC, six were UK PBs and nine were Overalls PBs, some of which of the latter two categories were truly remarkable.

Please have a squint at the round results page to see the full list of scores and PD prizes. Up front though our collective congratulations go to Victor Nikolov of the Wessex Club for going over the back for the first time; a great result.

Note. If any pilot has inadvertently not claimed a PD prize, or claimed the wrong PD prize (that does happen), please let me know and I can make amendments as required.

And so now the scores from the round. With the wind direction and predicted air mass the realistic CP limit of exploitation was set as a playground West of the A449 and M5 and North of the M50, with Worcester being on the expected track line. However, for Pilot rated and above, if they could negotiate the airspace, the potential distance rewards were substantial.

The results reflect this beautifully, with SE Wales Chris Ashdown leading the way with a tremendous 170.20km flight to Princes Risborough (good retrieve start point!), his UK PB, and Adam Kozlowski of DSC bagging a 200-point declared goal, worth 165.80km as an open distance flight to Newbury (a great spot hard by the racecourse). There were 9 flights of over 100km, of which four were Overall PBs and two UK PBs, the second of which went to round organiser James Allcock for his superb, declared goal to Morton-in-Marsh, enduring the fruits of his admin labours: a great result.

In terms of round scores, SE Wales Red carried on where they left off from Pandy and aided by Chris’ flight together with Mark Simpson, Lee Warren and Conor O’Brien’s super 69.0km Overall PB, took the 1,000 points from the round. The Long Mynd Soaring Club Blue team were in a well deserved second place with 778 points, with Martin Brown’s 126.10km Overall PB to go with James’ UK PB providing their foundation. Only a few points behind (773) were DSC1, aided by Ross Mason’s 109.0km to go with Adam’s flight.

On to the team rankings then; with another maximum score, SE Wales Red are looking hard to catch now on 3,879 points. They are followed (at some distance) by Crickhowell Paragliding in second spot with 2,573 points who continue to make a great impact in their first BCC season. In third place are SE Wales Blue, squeezing Condors Red into fourth place who in turn have both Avon A and DSC 1 very hot on their heels.

In parallel, SE Wales have also moved to the top of the Personal Development prizes tally for the season after that raft of PBs. They now have 10 of the 61 prizes earned to date, which is three more than Avon and Dunstable.

The SportsTrackLive scene for the round can be found here:

SportsTrackLive | Paragliding - BCC 2025 Round Four – Sat 2 Aug 25 – The Long Mynd | Matthew Tandy

That’s it for now; let’s see what scores come out of the Talybont round and whether any of the pursuing teams can close that gap to both SE Wales teams; a tough ask as they back on their home turf, although it has been done before...