Trial flights in a two-seat glider from Harrow Edge, a grass field on the Welsh border. Your instructor sits behind you and talks through every decision out loud. Scroll, and the doors open on today's sky.
The cumulus through the doors sit about 1,500 m up. The glider goes 42 m forward for every metre it sinks, so from cloud base to the grass is a long, quiet way. Move the cloud base and watch the line.
A thermal is a column of warm air lifting off a ploughed field or a sunlit roof. The glider circles inside it and climbs without a sound. Your instructor picks the day, reads the sky before every launch and lands you back on the same grass.
Before you sit in a glider, walk round one. Below, she stands in the hangar in still air. Push the airspeed and the air turns visible.
Walk round the gliderDrag the glider to walk round it. Point at a number and the part it measures lights up. The airspeed control moves the air past the wings: at rest it hangs as dust, at speed it peels off the wingtips in two slow spirals, and the wings bend upward under the load.
Still air. This is the hangar before the doors open.
Nobody rushes a first flight. If the sky is wrong, you fly another day; the booking moves with it and nothing is charged twice.
30 minutes with your instructor at the glider: the controls, the canopy, what the launch will feel like.
The winch pulls you to 400 m in about 40 seconds. Then the cable drops away and the noise stops.
Your instructor hands you the stick in smooth air and talks you through gentle turns.
Your instructor flies the landing. You walk the glider back to the hangar together.
Bay 2, cloud shadows crossing the floor