Spring 2025 Expedition to Camphill
Whenever winter gives way to spring, it is annual tradition for a few brave CUGC members to pick a hill and throw themselves off (figuratively speaking) for one last chance to experience ridge & wave lift before the thermal season starts; this year was no different, with four CUGC members – Darren, Faustyna, Ilia, and Thibaut – alongside three instructors from CGC – Ian Noble, Mark Lawrence-Jones, and Simon Smith – visiting the Derbyshire and Lancashire Gliding Club, also known as Camphill airfield, for the week of 23-29 March 2025.
Located deep within the heart of the Peak District, Camphill is one of the oldest gliding sites in the UK (boasting a similar age to the likes of Sutton Bank, Long Mynd, etc.), offering scenic flights amongst the picturesque valleys and hills of the District. It is largely a winch-only site, since its runways are not flat enough to operate aerotows safely, though on special occasions they sometimes also do bungee launches.
Camphill also has one of the weirdest topologies, in the author’s personal opinion, amongst even UK hilltop sites: it has a somewhat curvy and very steep westerly ridge which enables good chances for ridge soaring in many wind directions (ranging from southwesterly to northwesterly), which just nicely happens to line up nicely with the surrounding hills of the Peak District such that wave can sometimes interferes constructively with the ridge; and the flat valleys below can create fairly decent thermal lift the same way as anywhere else in the country. All in all, according to the locals, it is not unheard of to be able to stay on the ridge, get a thermal from there, and climb into the wave!
We arrived at Camphill on Sunday (23 March) evening, just in time for supper and a good rest, before greeting Monday’s benign weather of mild southerly winds and dotted clouds; that meant unfortunately no prospect of ridge nor wave, and we were thus launching and landing on Camphill’s longer southerly runway. The mild weather proved to be perfect for practicing circuits and general site familiarization, and Thibaut was even able to fly one of DLGC’s K13s and then a K18 solo!
On Tuesday (25 March) we were initially disappointed with the morning weather – murky low clouds and grey fog in the valley resulting in visibility too poor for flying – but we held out hope, and to our surprise the clouds cleared up in the late afternoon, just in time to squeeze in a small handful of flights before the end of the day (and what interesting flights they turned out to be)! It was a brisk westerly wind, with nobody else congesting the airspace (perhaps due to the poor morning weather); we thus took the Puchaczs and K13s to beat up and down along the ridge, staying afloat using what we thought was the ridge lift…except, for some reason, we found this “ridge lift” to wax and wane unpredictably, and somehow was able to sustain up to 1,400ft (or more) above the hilltop… [When we landed, the locals told us that what we encountered probably wasn’t the ridge, it was wave coming off of Mam Tor and aligning constructively with the ridge – hence explaning the anomalous height and inconsistent nature (as the wave passes in and out of alignment)!]
Wednesday (26 March) turned out to be a similarly benign day to Monday, this time with a slightly stronger southwesterly wind hinting tantalizingly at ridge lift (but it was not strong enough to keep any gliders up, instead merely just barely strongly enough to sustain the swarm of paragliders from the nearby Derbyshire Soaring Club) and therefore also forcing a southwesterly landing direction; but mostly again a day of circuit-bashing and flight skills training.
Thursday (27 March), on the other hand, turned out to be a very dramatic and successful day. It began with gusty west-southwesterly winds of 20+kts, almost-clear skies, and hints of wave in the distant lenticular clouds; the decision of the day was to launch to the south, accepting the crosswind to make use of the long runway, but then to land to the west with very steep full-brake final approaches to better punch through the wind gradient. It was under these conditions that Thibaut was able to get away with a K18 in the morning, sustaining a 90-minute flight using ridge and then wave lift! Darren, similarly, took a K13 solo to try to match Thibaut’s achievement, but by lunchtime strongly-developing thermals disrupted the ridge flow, so he was only able to get 20 minutes using thermals.
And then, in the midst of all this, Faustyna took a series of successful training flights with Pete Gray, one of DLGC’s instructors. She must have either impressed or annoyed him sufficiently, because – despite the raging crosswinds and rough thermals – Pete decided to step out of the rear seat, and sent her on her first solo!
Congratulations to Faustyna for going solo!
Later in the day, Thursday’s wind started to swing around to a straight westerly and strengthen to 25+kts, so the decision was made to shift the launching direction to be westwards. This is the interesting launch direction for Camphill, since the runway is very short and points directly off the ridge into the valley; in this direction, the winch only delivers ~600ft launches, with the expectation that gliders should be able to catch the ridge lift immediately off the launch (and failing that, they should do a field landing into the valley). Further solo flights were prohibited, for very obvious safety reasons, and so we took a small number of experiential flights with the local instructors using the little bit of daylight left to learn how to handle these complicated & challenging conditions.
Friday (28 March) began with the same winds & weather that Thursday ended with, thus prompting the same set-up of launching and landing on the short westerly runway; however the wind intensified throughout the day, breaching safe levels by mid-aftersoon, and so the flying day was cut short. We then left on Saturday afternoon (though we managed to each sneak in one last flight in the morning), saying our goodbyes tearfully to the beautiful hills and even-more-so wonderful people that we had spent our week with, to return home to Cambridge.
Sincere thanks to the members, instructors, and people of the Derbyshire and Lancashire Gliding Club for their wonderful hospitality, and for giving us a fun & enjoyable week!
Darren Lim
2024-25 CUGC Captain