First bit of thermalling

I was pissed off from the previous flight's landing, I actually staved my thumb when I threw my helmet to the ground! So we went straight back up and the weather conditions were the still the same at the top. There was nice head wind from the south so taking off was no problem. I gained a bit of distance from hill and I had a bit of space and Nicky said on the radio that if I wanted to try and do a bit of thermalling I could. So I flew down over one of the ridges and felt a thermal. It feels like a warm gust of wind coming from below and I could immediately feel myself gaining height. We I felt the thermal I started circling round to the left, the sky was fairly busy, there were about a 7 or 8 other gliders in the air and also a handglider, so I had to constantly check my airspace. "Look, lean, turn, look, lean, turn" is what Zabdi has drilled into our heads! I managed to gain a bit of height, I looked back at the launching site and I was about 100 - 150m above it so I was quite chuffed. I think I could have managed to get higher, but there were a lot of gliders just up higher and I didn't want to get to close. I also got a feel for what it was like exiting a thermal, a thermal is a column of warm air rising with cooler falling air round the outside. But it doesn't go straight up it kind of drifts with the wind, in this case a south wind going back up the hill. When leaving the thermal I felt the glider pitch forward and accelerate, this is where the pitch control training I had done early came in handy, I just applied a bit of brake as it pitched forward to steady it out. I wasn't too good at staying inside the thermal as my turns were too steep and it caused me to lose height. I was turning too much on one side, pulling the brake and also weight shifting to the left, but I needed to also apply a bit of right brake to smooth out the turns. The thermal I was tracking was coming from a long ridge that runs right up to the top of the mountain, Zabdi says that the best way to find thermals is to imagine taking the surrounding hills, turning them upside down and dipping them in a big bowl of honey, if you can imagine where the honey would then drip from is most likely where you'll find the thermals, it works surprisingly well! There are other signs too to look for, such as birds of prey circling and rocky areas as they let off more heat. I did see a couple of big birds circling on a ridge to the west I would have like to have gone and joined them but it was time to go and land. Zabdi was already at the landing site, this time we were using the large landing field. She got me to do a few 360 turns then do some figure of 8 turns down wind of the landing site to lose height. There was another glider in near by so I had to keep a close eye on him. Downwind of the landing site there was a freshly ploughed field that was giving off a lot of lift so it took quite a while to come down. I got ready to come in to land from the west and as I made my final approach I was aiming for a dirt road that runs up the middle of the field. But as I was flying towards the field and I was no longer over the ploughed field there was not so much lift so I ended up coming down about 15m earlier than I was intending. Again I didn't flare the glider enough when landing so I was a bit fast, I should have managed to run it off ok, but the ground was a bit uneven and I ended up tripping over my own feet and fell on top of the ONLY thistle in the entire field, just my luck! But this was by far my best flight I've done and it lasted about 40 - 45 minutes. Even though I had a bit of a tumble at the end I was well happy with it.