Give yourself a lift

Apprehensive on his first flight in a glider over the lochs and mountains of Scotland Andrew Eames was soon hooked.

Hamish, the chief winch operator at the Scottish Gliding Centre at Portmoak, had a few words of encouragement for us as we gaggled outside the clubroom like nervous new boys on the first day of school. "You're going to enjoy it," he chuckled.

He tucked a roll-up into the corner of his month. "Try the north face of the Bishop," he added enigmatically. Then he picked up his vacuum flask and ambled off to prepare to fling us into the sky.

One has to have one's doubts about a sport that catapults you aloft and then leaves you wiggling a stick to stay alive. None the less, the statistics on gliding are reassuring. In the past 12 months, there has been just one fatality in 400,000 launches. Enthusiasts maintain that it is safer than powered flying because there's nothing to explode.

Many gliding clubs run week-long beginner's' courses. I chose Portmoak near Kinross,

because it has its own accommodation, because I wanted land that looked beautiful from the air, and because it has "wave"- an air current that crosses the Cairngorms, descends and; then starts to rise again at Portmoak. When the wave is working, you can sit up there all day.

The cluster of overgrown huts feels like a cross between a quiet holiday camp and an airfield where Spitfire pilots whiled away the hours playing cards before being scrambled at dawn.

There were five of us on the course: a civil servant, a retired barrister, an architect, a product manager for a food supplier, and me. Susie the product manager had the dubious benefit of ladies first. The rest of us sorted out our roles: someone to hold a wing, someone to clip on the winch cable and someone to signal to Hamish with the heliograph.

An hour later, with Susie back on land glowing with enthusiasm, it was my turn. From the back seat,  the chief instructor, took me through the CBSIFTCBE checks: Controls, Ballast, Straps, Instruments, Flaps, Trim, Canopy, Brakes. "And emergencies, I shall deal with," said his voice behind me.

Then it was thumbs up and Uncle Hamish took up the slack. The wire decapitated the daisies, and the glider's nose trundled across the grass.

A winch launch is like a fairground ride.  Suddenly you're climbing at 45 degrees, revisiting your fried breakfast and the trees fall back to reveal loch, cornfields and mountains. At l, 000ft there's a sudden loss of pull, a chink from underneath the aircraft and the cable drops away. Instantly, it's quiet. And then the instructor murmurs: "Right, you have control." The first lesson is stick management. He gets me to haul the glider's nose up and plunge it down, causing the fields of corn to seesaw before us, and then to take the sticky tape on the canopy and glue it figuratively - to the horizon. It's hard to believe that I have any control whatsoever over this stiff-winged albatross, but I secure the stick and the panorama miraculously stops sliding around.

We try a few turns, but fail to find any thermals - columns of air rising from heat-reflecting features such as concrete or ploughed fields - so the instructor brings us parallel to the airfield, and takes control as we make our final turn above a boat ploughing stationary furrows on the loch. Then the ground comes rushing up, we bounce once and roll to a halt. Another virginity gone.

In the early afternoon I joined Hamish on the winch, a massive purpose-built caterpillar with whirring cable drums. We watched as the glider headed off towards the Bishop -which turned out to be a nearby hill, and scratched around looking for lift.

Hamish grunted.
"We needed more wind", he said. On particularly blustery days while waiting for instructions from the distant heliograph, he's had the winch hauled down the runway by a rising glider.

By the end of the afternoon session, the instructor had us working the rudder and the stick together. The next day dawned bright and clear and this time I was in luck: on my first flight of the day, we struck a bubbling kettle of warm air and circled, rising steadily. We crested the Bishop and it began to drop away underneath, revealing lochs on its nose.

I came away with the impression of gliding as something both thrilling and serene, but it had been comforting to have someone in the back who, after every safety check, chipped in with "And I'll deal with any emergencies".

CAN I DO THAT?
A week-long course at the Scottish Gliding Centre at Portmoak, near Kinross, costs £180, including instruction. Winch launch and flying time are additional: £6.50 per launch and 30 pence per minute in the air. Accommodation and meals are available at the Centre (see facilities), tel: 01592 840543. Contact the British Gliding Association on 0116 2531051 (www.gliding.co.uk) for a list of its 90-odd other member clubs, including many which also have beginners' courses.