What is Gliding ?

Gliding can be anything you want it to be!

Solitary, peaceful or blazingly competitive. You can drift silently along enjoying the sky and the country below, sharing a thermal with a circling buzzard.

You can climb to heights where you breathe oxygen and your fingers stiffen from the cold.

You can race across country in a swarm of high-performance gliders, covering hundreds of miles.

Glider pilots from Nympsfield have completed flights over of over 750Km, and regularly complete tasks at average speeds faster than you could drive the same route  in a high performance car.

It has about as much in common with holiday jet travel as sailing a racing yacht has with a Caribbean cruise ship.

You can perform an aerobatic dance that sets the blood rushing, soar with buzzards, or simply marvel at the views over the Severn Valley - on a good day you can see the Malvern Hills, Black Mountains and Wiltshire downs .

There are about ten thousand glider pilots in Britain.

Women are at no disadvantage as pilots, pupils or instructors. Teenagers and pensioners alike can learn to glide - and spend as much or as little as they choose on their pastime.