About this article
In July 2009 Mike Cavanagh and Kitt Rudd had a special day out, flying to the east coast from Brigsteer. This is Mike's forum post left at the time.

Pilot profile
Mike is an expert. He has held many national records and was UK XC league champion 2011 - 2014. Mike probably knows Cumbrian paragliding better than anyone.

XC flight details
Take off: Brigsteer, Landing: Filey, Date: 25 July 2009
Turnpoint distance: 169.6km, Duration 4h 30mins

Flight on the XC League l Doarama of Mike's flight

Mike Cavanagh
Still got the big grin plastered to my face from Saturday, even though it has been a bit hectic as on Sunday I was travelling out to the Ozone office in the South of France for this week and my XC Trainer and computer had a major falling out and would not talk to each other - very frustrating!

Anyway I'm glad I delayed my flight to France to make the most of last Saturday :D . After crossing the Pennines a couple of years back with Kitt I always thought we would do it big style and get to the East coast together. Apart from the airspace it worked like a dream. To me there is nothing better than climbing out from a hill with some good buddies knowing that you are going somewhere, not sure where, but it will be fun.

Ben had gone a little before us and we could see him downwind, Chris, Alex, Kitt and I all went in roughly the same thermal and all joined up properly over Sedbergh, Chris having got up excellently after leaving the hill a bit lower than us.

We keep saying we should get radios which would have been helpful as then I would have known why Kitt had been steadfastly heading to Scotch Corner (he arrived at the hill after I was in the air and had set a goal there) whilst I wanted to keep further south to get passed the airspace more easily. However him catching a thermal at his goal suckered me into going there as well. I knew his machine told him about airspace so I assumed it was making sense. I did not know his batteries had packed up and he was busy changing them by which time it was too late for him as his thermal had got him some way ahead. So very unlucky!

Meanwhile I kept well West of his track and got the paper map out! Folded all wrong for Scotland made it comical as I had to open the whole thing out to see the bottom right. And even then it was very hard to read it and work it all out. I still managed to stray along the air space fringe having worked a village out wrongly.

We joined up again over the North York Moors, bang on the 100km mark in a straight line - that had me shouting excitedly to Kitt - no radios needed for that!

The clouds were looking excellent and I could see me having fish and chips in Whitby again. However that passed us by as we set a target towards Flamborough Head. Unfortunately Kitts airspace indicator was now working and was showing him Fylingdales was on track and this had him gliding off to the right. I did not realise what he was doing as I knew that apart from maybe cooking me if I got too close we were allowed through it.

Kitt's detour took him off the best line as I went on to have wonderful views of Scarborough and the cliffs of Flamborough were getting close. Unfortunately the sea breeze put me down at Filey. 162km in a straight line or just over 101 miles! And after a lot of very timely trains I was back at my car by 21:30 and round to Kitt's for a few celebratory drinks

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