SAD DAY FOR GLIDER PILOTS!!
BOOKER/BICESTER/DIDCOT!! The standard 100 k triangle in a k8 gider, that wooden wonder with performance of 27 to 1 (thats 27 feet forward for every one foot down).
If you made it round BIC/DID and got back to Booker in a K8, you could be proud. Nowadays, flying glass gliders with a performance of 40 to 1 and even 60 to one, no big deal.
The memories of stubble fires and the Didcot chimney....must have shortened our lifespan with every breath. You had to fly DIRECTLY over the smoking chimney to contact astonishing lift...hold your breath and gain a thousand feet with every turn, but it smelled perfectly awful. Don't try climbing over the cooling tower, no lift in there! just water vapor... your view may be obstructed as you spiral down the inside... no, never tried it myself.
Which would you prefer? Six tidy cooling towers, or a farm of fifty wind turbines? Can't use them for soaring cross country....