Not Exactly a Walk: Slad from the air

This is not exactly a walk, but it does fit my criteria of trying to see the valley from different angles, as well as fulfilling an ambition I've had for some time, to see what it looks like from above.  And given that you can't walk in the air (unless you're Aled Jones), this is possibly close to it.

I was given a trial glider flight for my last birthday, which due to the variability of the weather last summer didn't actually happen until this May.  I was incredibly lucky (how lucky, I didn't realise at the time) to have a near-perfect day and to draw a very experienced and gung-ho instructor by the name of Simon Buckley.  We went up courtesy of the Cotswold Gliding Club from Aston Down airfield.  The flight was supposed to last about 15 minutes, but we found a series of thermals which Simon (a self-confessed fliding addict) was unable to resist, and were actually up for closer to 40 minutes, circling over Minchinhampton and peeking in on Gatcombe, among other things.  Near the end of the flight, we passed close to Stroud and I got a fleeting glimpse of what I suddenly realised was Our Valley - recognised it, curiously, by the three copper beeches in the village, which stood out like beacons.  This started a train of thought.  Would it be theoretically possible, I asked Simon when we landed, to glide as far as Slad Valley, near enough to take some photos?  "Yes," said Simon, "Look out for a good day and we'll do it."

Mission Control

All of which is to explain what I am doing at Aston Down today.  It's taken a while - not that there hasn't been any good weather up to now, but that, like mice in the undergrowth, it's been difficult to spot.  The forecast for this week was suddenly and startlingly like summer, so I e-mailed Simon in hope, to be told 'it has to be this afternoon'.  Swift panic, readying camera and dealing with unexpected flat tyre on the car, but I arrive at the airfield in time.  It's a stonkingly hot day, but this is not so good for gliding, apparently.  A couple of pilots waiting by the club's Battle Bus (mission control here is a double-decker) shake their heads.  Not much lift, they say, everyone else is giving up and going home.  Hmm.  The sky is uniformly blue, and this is the problem - no clouds to tell you where the thermals are.  'No buzzards either' says Simon.  Buzzards?  I hadn't thought of this, but of course buzzards use thermals too, so a circling buzzard is a good indicator of a thermal.

I think I've said several times that for me, the buzzard is symbolic of Slad Valley, so I would love to be able to say that we find one and it enables us to get there.  But we don't.  Life's like that - no sense of dramatic synergy.  Here's what actually happens.

I and a parachute are strapped into the front seat of a sleek, white and very small-looking dual-control glider.  I am shown how to get out of the straps, which lever to pull to jettison the clear perspex canopy and what to pull to unleash the parachute.  I hope very much I won't have to do all these things as I'm certain I will get them in the wrong order.  We are winched into the air - a mad, tugging rush, then a startlingly loud bang as the towline is detached.  Simon has warned me about this in advance, which is just as well, or I'd have the impression we were being shot down.  We circle the airfield for a while, looking for lift in places where it ought to be, but not finding it, finally run out of options and have to land.  Oh well, I think, it was worth a try.  But Simon is made of sterner stuff.  Am I game for another go?

I certainly am.  So we get a second launch, which takes us to 1000 feet, but of course we start sinking straight away unless we can find some lift.  We need 3000 feet to get to Slad Valley, apparently.

There is a gadget in the glider which makes a sound which tells Simon (who is doing all the flying, by the way, I am just a passenger with a camera) whether we're going up or down - high-pitched pips for up, low-toned wail for down.  There is a worrying amount of wail at first, but presently Simon finds a small bit of lift and starts doing tight circles, slowly clawing upwards by a few hundred feet.  He swings out towards the Chalford valley in hopes of finding some lift there, but to no avail, so it's back towards the airfield, and more tight circles.  This process, known as 'scratching' (as in 'scratching around for lift') goes on for a long time.  It's frustrating for Simon as well as me.  As he puts it, a glider pilot's main ambition is to go up, and then along.  Down and round in circles doesn't do it for him either.  There are thermals out there, but nothing to tell him where they are, so he has to go by instinct and experience.  There's a 15-knot breeze which is pushing us away from the airfield in the wrong direction, as well as scattering the thermals.  It's blisteringly hot in the glider and after an hour the circling motion is beginning to get to me.  Twice we come close to calling it a day again.  Then Simon suddenly finds a lift which he describes as being like a thermal four inches wide, and we circle in and out of it, alternately sinking and shooting upwards, sometimes so fast that the shrill pips become a shriek.

Definitely the right valley

At last, we have 3000 feet, just enough to make an attempt on the valley, despite the breeze.  We swing out across Nailsworth, over the edge of Stroud and head for the bottom of the Slad Valley.  On top of flying the glider, Simon is thinking of camera angles.  I'll be able to get a view up the valley at least, he suggests.  'We have got the right valley have we?' he asks, suddenly panicking.  But I know it's the right valley.  Even from up here, where everything looks weirdly flat, I recognise the characteristic line of the road, the pattern of the woods, the shape of the village.  After months of making Google maps of my walks, the shape of the valley has sunk into my consciousness.

3000 feet does give you a completely different perspective, though.  From up here, the woods are much more significant visually than they seem at ground level, where you're always looking up at them, compressing their width into a short eye-line.  Whereas Swifts Hill, which seems so dominant from anywhere in the southern half of the valley, from up here becomes just one more field.  The contours of the land are barely visible - it's the changes of colour and texture, from tree to meadow, from road to building, which give definition.    The Slad Brook isn't visible of course, except as a line of trees, but I can see the length of the lake below Steanbridge House.  It all looks a lot more like a map than you'd expect.  (I don't know why this surprises me, but it does.)  But it also looks close, as if I could reach out and touch it, not like looking out of a commercial aircraft, where it's like a film unrolling far below you.  For a few moments I feel part of the valley's airspace, and know that I'm subject to its winds and temperature variations.  This is the closest I'll ever get, I suspect, to a buzzard's view of things.

Buzzard's view of Slad

We fly along the south-eastern edge of the valley, staying on the side closest to the airfield, moving fast.  'Glide' doesn't really describe this, being too gentle a word for the sound of the air rushing over the plane and the sense of speed.  Simon dips the left wing vertiginously to give me the widest view of the valley, circling left, warning me that after this pass, we have to turn back.  From this angle I've a clear view of the lower end of the valley and the village, but the upper end is hard to see, the perspective too flat, and the Dillay valley is under the glider's nose.  For a frantic few seconds the valley is rushing beneath me and I'm trying to get photos clear of the obstructions of the glider's structure and then we're moving away and it's over.  I'm elated.  'Well done!' I shout to Simon.  'We're not home yet' he says, ominously.

We head straight back towards the airfield, accompanied by a continuous low wail from the up-down gadget.  I'm holding my breath, but as we approach the runway's reassuring cross-shape, Simon says we've enough height to do a proper approach, which means circling round to come in from the other end.  He sounds pleased. He says this is because it's safer that way, just in case any other gliders are coming in, but I suspect it's also because he's professionally-minded, preferring to do things properly even when he's pushing the glider to its limits.

Putting the glider away

We land decorously by the club hangar and clamber out, grateful for the cooler air.  We've been in the air for an hour and a half.  Almost everyone else has gone home, and there's a scramble to find someone to help put the glider away, and to ferry us back to the other end of the field and our cars.  But I don't care how long all this takes, because I've done it - seen the valley for myself from the air - and no amount of looking at Google Earth even comes close.  Simon, too, is quietly triumphant.  I suspect that I've been enormously lucky again, that without his considerable skill, experience and sheer tenacity we wouldn't have made it today.  Thank you, Simon, and Cotswold Gliding Club.