Stephen P and Als T and B, and I had a good day of Autumn flying at Moorfoots on Tuesday. Enough breeze to soar and some interesting thermals up to about 2000 all along the ridge. There was a band of high cloud spreading from NE so I kept heading W to get into a more sunny area, as the high ground behind was shady so it looked unlikely that crossing it would be easy. At the W end of the ridge it started to get interesting with the whole buzzard family out practicing, although it took me a while of trying to persuade them to turn, before I realised they were doing a Module on convergence flying. So, by simply following the buzzards about, I was up at the 3500 limit while they happily carried on up.
Ive always wanted to cross onto Dundreich Hill, and it was especially inviting as the whole Eddleston valley was in sun, so a bit more cross wind and I was away in a direction Ive not flown before. I needed one more climb to clear Collie Law and a nice lee side appeared just in time to scrape over and on round the corner to land in Peebles between the old railway and Eddleston water. (which seemed a great idea until, walking towards town, I realised I was surrounded on 3 sides by deep drain ditches - lucky I had a spare pair of socks in the bag ). Along for the X 62 to Gala and the X95 back up the Moorfoots road end where Al had deposited my car - Thanks.
