Spring weekend 2026 at Sutton Bank – 2 Reports

The Yorkshire Gliding Club at Sutton Bank is an old favourite for Women Gliding women to descend on for a weekend of flying, chatting, eating, drinking, laughing and learning, and so we did, in March 2026. Enjoy these two reports, from Aarhus and Portmoak pilots respectively:

This is what Christina, Danish Gliding Team member from Aarhus, wrote:

From Flat Denmark to the Sutton Bank Ridge: A Women Gliding Weekend

The journey to the Women Gliding Weekend at Sutton Bank started, like many good flying adventures, with a simple message in the group chat: “The journey to the gliding weekend has officially begun 🇩🇰✈️.”

This time, the journey started in Denmark.

I first came to the UK for the Women’s World Gliding Championship in 2022. What I expected was a competition. What I didn’t expect was discovering how much I would enjoy flying in the UK – and how welcoming the gliding community would be. Since then, I’ve kept finding reasons to return.

So when I was invited to join the Women Gliding Spring Weekend at Sutton Bank, it didn’t take much convincing. In fact, Liz Sparrow and Claudia Hill did a very good job of persuading me it would be worth the trip. They were absolutely right.

By the time I arrived, the WhatsApp group for the weekend was already buzzing. Pilots were travelling from all over the UK – some stuck in traffic, some already at the airfield, others coordinating train pickups and lifts. It felt like watching a small migration of glider pilots slowly converge on Sutton Bank.

And when we finally did, it immediately felt like we had known each other much longer than a few hours.

Friday evening set the tone perfectly. Instead of a quiet start, someone suggested curry, which quickly escalated into a rather impressive takeaway order for a large group of hungry pilots. The clubhouse filled with flying stories, laughter, and the usual mixture of weather speculation and optimistic predictions for the weekend ahead.

For me, arriving from Denmark, it was one of those moments that reminds you why the gliding community is so special. You arrive somewhere new, and within minutes you feel completely at home.

Sutton Bank itself is quite a place to fly. Even if you’ve seen photos before, standing on the launch point and looking out across the Yorkshire countryside is something else entirely. The ridge stretches along the hills, the views go on for miles, and you immediately understand why so many pilots talk about flying here.

Coming from Denmark, it almost feels unfair how perfectly the Yorkshire Gliding Club is positioned on top of this ridge. At home our landscape is beautifully flat – wonderful for many things, but not ideal for ridge soaring. Most of our flying relies entirely on thermals, and wave or ridge lift is something we only rarely experience.

At Sutton Bank, the ridge is right there beside the runway. Launch, turn onto the ridge, and suddenly you’re soaring along the hillside with the landscape dropping away beneath you. It’s easy to see why this place is so loved by the pilots who fly here regularly. They are fantastically lucky to have such a site.

And then there’s the horse.

Not an actual horse wandering around the airfield – but the famous Kilburn White Horse, carved into the hillside along the ridge. When you’re flying along Sutton Bank ridge, it’s hard to miss this enormous white figure looking up from the slope.

It’s one of those landmarks that makes you smile every time you see it. A slightly surreal sight while soaring along the ridge – as if someone decided gliding needed a bit of artwork in the landscape.

Spending a weekend flying together as a group of women pilots also has a special value. In most gliding clubs we are still a minority, and while that rarely stops us from flying, opportunities to spend time with many other women pilots at once don’t come along very often.

Weekends like this create space for conversations that might not normally happen during a busy club flying day. Experiences are shared, advice travels quickly around the table, and you realise how many different paths people have taken into the sport. It’s inspiring, encouraging – and simply a lot of fun.

Travelling to fly in another country is also incredibly valuable as a pilot. Even though we are all flying the same gliders, clubs often have slightly different ways of doing things on the ground. Ground handling routines, launch signalling, cockpit check flows, software tools, student logbooks, and how daily operations are organised can all vary from place to place.

Experiencing those differences gives you new ideas, new perspectives, and a deeper understanding of how other pilots and clubs operate. You often return home with a few good ideas – and occasionally the thought, “that’s actually a better way of doing it.”

For me, travelling from Denmark to join a UK gliding weekend might sound unusual, but it didn’t feel unusual at all. The community is so welcoming that the distance almost disappears.

Weekends like this also don’t happen by themselves. A huge thank you to Kelly Teagle and Sarah Stubbs for organising the event and bringing everyone together – and to Liz Sparrow and Claudia Hill for convincing me to come over and join.

I’m very glad they did.

If you’re a woman glider pilot outside the UK, don’t assume these events aren’t for you. Come along. The UK gliding community is incredibly open, and weekends like this are a fantastic way to meet new pilots, experience different flying sites, and become part of a wider network of women in the sport.

You might get to fly at Sutton Bank – or another beautiful gliding location somewhere in the UK.

And once you’ve flown along the ridge and waved at the white horse on the hillside, you’ll understand why people keep coming back.

I certainly will. ✈️

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And here's Clare's view! Clare flies at the Scottish Gliding Centre at Portmoak:

On the weekend of 6-8th March, Women Gliding were hosted at Sutton Bank, a striking hilltop site in Yorkshire, marked at the runway end by the Kilburn White Horse. Friday was sadly traditional British murk and drizzle, but the clifftop pathway was braved for a stroll and a look at the “view” (mostly clouds). More ladies from an impressive geographical range (Dorset to Easterton in the Highlands) arrived and Sutton Bank’s own Kelly Teagle brought in the evening’s curry, which was heartily devoured.

Pics: Claudia

Saturday brought flyable weather, and the airfield sprang to life to make the most of it. All of the 20-odd visitors who wanted to fly did fly, whether in the club's K21s, the Astir, the motor glider or the privately owned Duo Discus 620, and everyone towed up to a sensible margin below cloudbase to cram in the most flying possible. In the evening, a very muddy but happy crowd gathered for dinner and then on to the evening talk. It was mildly surreal for me to have travelled all the way to Sutton Bank to hear from Dominic Newton, a fellow member of my own club, but the talk on Part 66L Inspecting was fascinating stuff, and hopefully the birth of the next generation of women inspectors.

Pics: Claudia

On Sunday unfortunately we fell 2-1 to the weather but after making use of instrument approaches to find the clubhouse in the fog, Liz, Claudia and others spoke about the fun to be had in gliding competitions. I hear wonderful things of the next presentation, but sadly at this point it was time for me to pack up my tent and drive back to bonnie Scotland. I have met so many wonderful lady pilots and look forward to the next one. And everyone coming to visit me at Portmoak, of course!

Pic: David