Mid-week punt

The weather observations for today looked good for The Pines and I was able to leave work early and was set up on the launch by 2pm. No one else around, but although it felt pretty light it was thermic so I pulled the wing up and ran off the hill. There was some light lift over the pine plantation, and I drifted around in it until I had located the core of the thermal and took it up to around 1,000m. Here I lost the core, and while searching for it fell completely out the back of the thermal and was heading down fast. I tried to fly back into it based on my flightpath on the Garmin GPS but couldn't seem to co-ordinate my flying with the track delay and wandered around in sink until I'd lost most of my height.
As the car was parked near the top of the hill I flew back towards launch with the intention of top landing. Unfortunately there was no lift close to the hill so I slope landed 50m or so below the takeoff – realising at the last moment that my chosen landing spot was covered in 5ft high thistles, rather than the dried grass that it looked like! It took a surprising amount of effort to extricate the wing and lines from the thistles, bunch it up and carry it back up to the launch.
By the time I arrived Ted (and students) were there (they had just returned from lunch in Beechworth after flying earlier on) however the wind was swinging around to the West and clouds had shaded out everything. I spent a while waiting for a sunny patch but it wasn't going to happen so I ended up launching for a sleddie down (and a lift back up).
The clouds looked really good to be flying under – dark, flat bottoms, with a nice but not scary amount of development. I can't help but think that if I had managed to take that first climb all the way up I could have spent several hours of happy cloud flying. Oh well, I guess there's always another day....