The Beckoning Silence (11 page)

We did it because we loved it and for no other reason. We didn’t philosophise our way up frozen waterfalls or ponder the great mysteries of life as we endured storms and hard times on the hills. We just took whatever enjoyment we could glean from the experience.

That was the point; it was a very simple game. We played it because it seemed the best way of living. John Huston, the film director, once wrote, ‘The most important thing about life is to avoid boredom at all costs. If you find that what you are doing is uninteresting, then you had better change your routine. I’m held together by things that fascinate me.’

The hills had always fascinated us, held us in thrall so we went to them. Maybe that was all we had ever tried to do – played games on a dangerous stage to avoid boredom at all costs. I thought that I had no illusions about what we were doing, but I had been forced to realise that the man who says he has no illusions has at least that one.

I didn’t fly for a long time after Tat’s death. I was unnerved. Only when spring came round and the weather improved did I realise that either I had to sell all the brand-new flying gear or give it a try. The thought scared me deeply. John and Richard, Les and Peter were wonderful, encouraging me not to give up. They were right, I knew that instinctively, but Tat’s death had shaken me to the core. They had a lot of flying under their belts. They had been in big thermals, flown through turbulent thermic winds, and had experienced the joy of long cross-country flights. They knew and understood why Tat had loved flying so much.

‘Why don’t you just wait until you’ve had one really good flight?’ Richard suggested. ‘Something you’ve never done before, big thermals and a cross-country, say, and if after that you still don’t like it, well then, go ahead and sell the gear.’

‘At least that way you’ll be making a decision based on facts and not emotion,’ John added. ‘If you give up now you might regret it because you would never be certain whether you were right or not.’

‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right,’ I agreed reluctantly.

When the good weather arrived I made a few tentative and very nervous attempts at flying and to tell the truth I was pretty disappointed. We didn’t seem to do anything different from before. I popped the wing up and took off and flew around in circles ridge-soaring and landed on the top of the hill again. It wasn’t the wonderfully exciting adventure that John had promised.

I knew that flying conditions in Britain were always much harder than in Europe so in the end I decided that the only thing to do was book a holiday in central Spain, based in Piedrahita, about two hours’ drive north of Madrid. I was assured that it was one of the world’s very best flying sites.

A few weeks before Richard, John, Les and I were due to fly out to Spain John broke his ankle in a botched take-off on Mam Tor. I visited him in hospital the next day. He looked grey and sickly from the morphine and the pain and his yellow bruised foot with the livid scar and bristling stitches reminded me of all the operations I had undergone on my knee and ankles. Whatever frail confidence I had managed to regain evaporated at the sight of him lying in his hospital bed. I never wanted to go through that again. Consequently the holiday wasn’t a great success. I was too worried to enjoy myself. The weather was indifferent and most of the flying was ridge-soaring but I did catch my first thermals and climbed up in the presence of two watchful hawks swinging in fast circles on the lifting air.

On our last day and last flight Richard had his best flight ever travelling over the pass en route to Avila and landing some 30 kilometres from our take-off point. I had dropped down to the valley in sinking air, watching in dismay as Richard disappeared into the far distance. When I landed I was absolutely livid. For a short period I was so frustrated and disappointed I stomped around the landing field furiously cursing the local wildlife. It was only when I calmed down that I realised I must be getting hooked on this flying game if it could mean so much to me to have failed. What would it have been like if I had succeeded and followed Richard over that distant pass?

A few months went by and John, recently out of plaster and annoyed at missing out on his Spanish flying holiday, suggested we go back to Piedrahita for another quick trip. This time the weather and the flying were superb. One day as I was sinking into the middle of the valley almost 3000 feet below my take-off point on the ridge overlooking Piedrahita I remembered something John had mentioned to me about ‘trigger points’. These could be anything from a group of boulders, a tower on a ridge, the roof tiles of a village or even different coloured fields. They acted as trigger points where thermals broke free of the earth and rose up in warm columns of air drifting back on the breeze. My variometer had been emitting a constant depressing drone indicating how fast I was sinking. As I neared the ground and began searching for a good landing field free from high-powered cables and tall trees I noticed a dark patch of ground, a sort of earthy hillock just to the right of the town’s bull-ring. This had been one of the ‘trigger points’ that John had pointed out to me. I turned towards it, flying to its downwind side, feeling dubious about the chances of getting a saving climb from this low in the valley.

Suddenly the leading edge of my canopy buckled on the left side and the wing tip momentarily tucked beneath itself. I kept pressure on the right brake handle to maintain my direction and watched as the wing tip popped out again. I had flown into a thermal. It was small, tight and punchy and as I turned into its centre and began to circle as tightly as I could. I was delighted to hear the variometer making a rapid high-pitched pipping noise. I did not need it to tell me I was climbing. It felt as if I had been sitting in the armchair comfort of my harness and suddenly a huge hand had reached down and hauled me bodily upwards. The initial violent lift had thrown me to one side and my heart was hammering as I shot skywards. I had never done anything like it before and was at once exhilarated and apprehensive. As I gained height the thermal became smoother and wider and easier to core. I glanced at my vario, which at times was showing a climbing rate of 1600 feet per minute. I looked around to see if there were any other canopies in the thermal but I was alone. I relaxed a little, glad to know I didn’t have to contend with a gaggle of up to forty wings searching and circling above the take-off zone in a hectic chaotic multi-coloured mass where I would have been terrified of a mid-air collision.
I can enjoy this
, I thought, as I flew inexpertly out of the back of the thermal and felt the canopy bang over in a partial collapse as it was hit by the rapidly sinking air.

Soon I had climbed 3500 feet and could see that I was in the centre of the wide valley leading towards the pass cutting through the hills to the west. I wondered whether I should head back for the comfort of the ridge line and almost immediately bounced exuberantly into another powerful thermal and began to spin upwards. As I approached the pass I began to worry about whether I had the experience to be doing this sort of flying. I tried to remember how much height above take-off John had said I needed to clear the pass safely. If I crossed without enough height I would risk being caught by fast sinking air and turbulent rotor on the other side. John had warned me that a pilot had broken his ankle in a hard landing doing just that the previous year.
What had he said?
I couldn’t for the life of me remember. I was using all the concentration I could muster simply to keep flying. I began to feel stressed and anxious.
Three thousand feet above take-off.
That was it. So where am I now
? I glanced at my vario.
Five hundred feet above take-off. It’s not enough.
I had to find another climb. I hit sinking air and the vario began its depressing drone, then stopped: silence for a moment, then a pip, another pip, then another.
Come on, come on, catch me,
I muttered to the invisible thermal – and it did.

Swinging in wide climbing circles I watched two large birds of prey circling below me. Their wing-tip flight feathers moved imperceptibly as they rode the rising air. Suddenly I saw another paraglider sweeping in from my left. He had seen me catch the thermal and had glided straight for my position.

We hung opposite each other, exactly level, carving great sweeping circles through the sky. Sometimes it felt as if we were still and the world was spinning around us and I had to look away. I was laughing as we rose, then swearing as I fell out of the back of the thermal again and I had to scratch around the sky looking for lift. I was keenly aware of my incompetence, especially when I next looked for my companion, only to see him far to the west thousands of feet above the pass and heading for Avila.

I remember looking down between my legs at one point and suddenly being overwhelmed with a sense of vertigo. The unwelcome thought popped into my mind that I was sitting in a nylon seat hanging by silk-thin kevlar lines above 7000 feet of empty space.
What if they snapped?
For a moment I had this horrific image of plunging down to the valley floor before reason took over.
Of course they won’t snap, you idiot! And even if they did you would just throw your reserve.
I immediately let go of my right brake toggle and reached back to the right side of my harness, searching for the reserve deployment handle. It came comfortingly into my hand and I mentally rehearsed what I would have to do.
Pull the strap out and forward and then swing it back and throw it vigorously behind me.
The packed circular emergency canopy would sail out and deploy almost instantly.
Or so the theory goes,
 I cautioned myself.

I grabbed the right brake toggle and continued flying towards the pass. Glancing at my vario I could see I had reached an altitude of 10,500 feet. It meant I was at least 4000 feet above take-off and there was no good reason not to attempt the pass. I straightened my flight, lessened the pressure on the brakes and pressed my feet against the speed bar in an effort to gain the best glide.

An hour later I found myself sinking steadily into the Avila valley. I had not only crossed the pass but flown a total of 30 kilometres from my take-off point. It was strange how the moment I had stopped thinking about trying to stay in the air I had immediately begun to sink. I had suddenly realised how drained I felt from the flight. All I had wanted to do was cross the pass and I had exceeded my hopes beyond all expectation. I knew an experienced pilot would have done it in half the time and would now be intent on reaching Avila, a further 20 kilometres up the long broad valley stretching to the west. I was content to fly gently down and land.

I came into a soft landing in a sandy ploughed field and was astounded at how weak and wobbly-legged I felt the moment the stress of flying had gone. I hadn’t appreciated how physically exhausting and mentally taxing flying could be. I was drenched in sweat and my neck ached from constantly craning it to the left. I shrugged the harness off my shoulders, unclipped the leg straps and let it fall to the ground. I turned and looked back at the pass and it suddenly dawned on me what I had done. I had just had my first really good flight. I had never experienced anything like it in my life. There was a mixture of exultation and unsteady relief, of delight and fading fear. My legs were trembling and I felt shaky so I knelt in the soil.

I suddenly understood what Tat had been doing and why and it overwhelmed me for a moment. I did not know whether I was crying for Tat or at the wonder of what I had just experienced. I could fly. It seemed pretty damned special.

John had warned me that there were fighting bulls bred for the bull-ring in some fields and it was worth looking out for them. They were extremely dangerous. He had once landed in an apparently empty field and had almost packed up his wing when he saw a dark shape suddenly rise from a tree-shadowed corner of the field. The bull charged with furious speed and John had only just managed to throw his wing, harness and himself over a dry-stone wall topped with barbed wire before the beast had reached him.

I was walking wearily towards the main road where I hoped to hitch a lift back to Piedrahita when I heard the sound of drumming hooves. I glanced wildly around but couldn’t see anything. I was in a grassy field planted with an orchard of fruit trees. I ran towards the nearest tree hoping to be able to jump up and grab the lower branches. It wouldn’t be easy with fifty pounds of paragliding equipment in a huge unwieldy rucksack on my back. As the hoof beats became louder I knew I had no chance of reaching the tree. I spun round, flipping one shoulder strap free. I might be able to protect myself with the paraglider.

A foal and a grey horse galloped into the grove of trees in which I was cowering and wheeled round in an excited rush, whinnying and snorting and then galloping off through the trees. I sank to my knees and began to laugh.

As I sat in one hundred degrees of blazing sunshine watching Spanish motorists blithely ignoring both the speed limit and my out-stretched thumb I thought about the flight and what I had done wrong and how I could improve.

There was so much to learn. I thought of Tat and all the fun we had enjoyed. He was gone. We could do nothing about it. It was his time. I remembered the words of the Blessing for the Dead that I must have learned as a child:

Blessed are the dead

for they have been given wings to fly

and not dwell upon the earth.

Yes,
I thought thinking of Tat,
that seems about right, kid.

I remembered the first verse of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem ‘The Windhover’. It seemed to evoke everything that was wondrous and life-enhancing about flying. Tat would have appreciated it:

I caught this morning’s minion, kingdom

of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in

his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he hung upon the rein of a wimpling wing