I came off the wire at Husbands Bosworth at about nine hundred feet with a cloud ahead. Not a classic cloud but probably enough to get started. I headed for it but after a few turns I had climbed fifty and lost a hundred feet. Never mind, there was another cloud a bit further upwind with at least five gliders under it which looked a certainty. It might have been stretching things a little bit but surely I could get up that one.

How wrong can you be? Half way to the cloud I hit sink and suddenly I was not very high, with the airfield behind me at an unknown distance and going down rather quickly. There were landable looking fields under the cloud so the safest option seemed to keep going and give it a try.

Committed! I put on speed and made for the thermal whilst eyeing the fields and working out the best place to try to join with the others. Nearing the thermal the latter concern proved unfounded. For one thing I was now well below the other gliders and for another the lower gliders in the stack had decided to scatter. Either the pilots did not, understandably, like the look of me or else the thermal had stopped working. Which do you think? As I entered the area of the alleged thermal I got a little bit of lift and managed a couple of measly turns before the sink really started.

So this was it. At last I was really going to have to do a real field landing. All the while I had been eyeing the fields and had picked a stubbley looking one that was into wind with some middle sized trees across the approach. It was a bit small, but as the altimeter read six hundred feet and the vario six down it would definitely do. In the circumstances a standard circuit was out and sticking fairly tightly to the field I quickly went through the downwind checks. Paragliding experience told me that the sink would lessen at some point, (sinking air cannot pass through the ground!) but I inevitably ended up a bit high on the approach. I wasn't too unhappy about this. Better too high than low and I wanted to make a steep approach in case the trees at the threshold were obscuring a wire. A bit of sideslip put me on the right line and before I knew it I was rolling up the field wondering if it might be a good idea to tighten the wheel brake adjustment. I had used a lot of the field, partly because of the trees on the approach and partly because it wasn't that big anyway.

As I set about the process of sorting things out I silently thanked all the instructors who had given me field landing lectures and training. Thanks fellas, it really works. Next time I'll try and make the flight just a little bit longer than five minutes.