thing - Shenington is in Oxford, I believe.
Mary Meagher - Indeed, I will never pay for the whole course up front. At AFC, they give you your exams free of charge if you deposit £1000. Still a lot of money, but at the rate I'm hoping to be flying, the money shouldn't be in their bank for more than 2 weeks
Gliding wise, unfortunately, I was only able to get solo, and couldn't progress much further. The airfield (Walney, Barrow-In-Furness, NW England) was a good hour's drive away, and the weather there was often very different to where I lived (usually much worse). I often went to the airfield (which was only operational at weekends, if an instructor decided to turn up), to find it was howling wind and peeing it down with rain, or the gliders weren't available, or something.
Didn't get to go last year at all as we didn't have a tug aircraft, and as I worked on Saturdays, it was very hit and miss whether Sunday would be possible... As a result, I didn't get as much gliding done as I would have liked.
I will certainly do my tailwheel conversion, and hopefully find a local club I can do some tugging at... Do you know if there are minimum requirements to be a tug pilot?
Thank you
Toby