Hang Gliding and Paragliding

We first got the idea of learning to hang-glide around 1986. I think it may have been an advert in the YHA magazine, or something like that. Clare and I, in our typically idiosyncratic and whimsical way, decided that it would be interesting to fly hang gliders. So, we paid for a five-day course and drove up to Yorkshire for training.

We were based in a rather nice country house hotel, complete with its own grounds. Each day, we were ferried out to the surrounding hills to begin our lessons. I’d be lying if I said we weren’t nervous - running down a hill with a hang glider strapped to your back, launching into mid-air, and hoping not to crash and die isn't the most calming prospect.

The first thing we encountered was the so-called "simulator" - a jerry-rigged affair, essentially a steel tripod with a hanging harness. You strapped yourself in and hung from it, gripping the A-frame - the basic hang glider control. Push it forward and the nose goes up; pull it back and the nose dips; tilt it sideways and you bank left or right. Of course, suspended on a tripod in a yard, you weren’t actually going anywhere but it was a start.

What we hadn’t appreciated, due to our failure to read the small print, was that the five-day course was weather-dependent. Getting five days of suitable flying weather in the Yorkshire Dales was, frankly, a fantasy. I think we managed maybe two, three days at most. During that time, we learned how to assemble the hang glider and how to run down a slope with it, assisted by a couple of other students holding onto guide ropes attached to the wings. These ropes were there to stop the glider either taking off prematurely or catastrophically veering into the ground. At most, we were a few feet off the ground.

Clare didn’t have a great time. She wasn’t much taken with the business of sprinting downhill while dodging molehills. In the end, we didn’t fly any actual hang gliders, and Clare quite reasonably decided she was done. She wasn’t inclined to persevere.

But I was. The arrangement was that the five days were non-refundable, but you could come back until you'd used them all. So I did. I returned later and completed the course, eventually earning my Club Pilot Certificate. To do that, I had to launch from the top of a hill - perhaps 200 to 300 feet high, steeper than the glider's glide angle - fly down, and finally land without falling over. I managed that. I also passed the required written exams on rules of the air, weather, and meteorology.

I still have the certificate, but I told the instructor at the time that I’d probably never fly a hang glider again. Hang gliders, as it turned out, were expensive, heavy, and took an age to assemble. Meanwhile, paragliding was emerging as a far more convenient alternative: basically a glorified parachute with air cells forming an aerofoil. You just unpack it, clip in, and go. That was much more appealing.

Back in Sible Hedingham where we lived at that time, I joined a club based at South Weald Airfield - near STL in Harlow - that specialised in towed-paragliding. Harlow, of course, is flat as a pancake, so we used a Jeep with a thousand-foot tow rope. The routine was simple: you'd strap the rope to your harness, set up the paraglider in a foot-high wall behind you, and face backwards. Once ready, you'd yank the glider up so it inflated overhead, spin around, and then the Jeep would start moving. 

As you ran forward, the increasing speed would lift you into the air. At around 60 mph, you’d climb quickly to 700 or 800 feet. At that point, you'd press the release, let the rope drop away, and you were free to fly - turns, stalls, spins, whatever aerobatics you fancied - until you were down to about 200 feet. Then you’d line up and land.

You could usually get four or five flights in a day. It was exhilarating, if initially frightening. I did get used to it, though never quite rid myself of the underlying anxiety. On Sunday mornings, I’d phone the club for a weather update, wondering if the trip was worthwhile. A part of me wanted to go; another part of me didn’t: fear and the thought of a day lost away from Clare and the kids. Given that I was already away five days a week, it felt a little selfish. It certainly wasn’t ideal for family solidarity.

Eventually, I decided that rather than tow-launched flights, I wanted to paraglide in the mountains. So I signed up for a course in the Brecon Beacons.

Flying there was different. You’d catch the ridge lift and fly along at 150 to 200 feet above the ground, just near the top, adjusting your line as the wind funneled into depressions and rolled over outcrops. Walkers would wave as you silently traversed above them. And when you were done, you’d simply descend hundreds of feet to the bottom to regroup.

The key was to relax, to feel the flow of the canopy. You had two control lines, one in each hand, to steer and adjust your speed. You made small corrections: if it lurched left, you pulled gently right, and so on. The art was in delicacy, in being responsive. When it worked, it was a wonderfully serene experience.

But was it safe? They said it was about as dangerous as motorcycling. Still, one thing that always nagged at me was the knowledge that if you hit a downdraft at 100 feet, you couldn’t recover. People did break their backs in those situations. And that made every flight feel, just a little, like Russian roulette. I was not reassured by Kevlar back protectors!

My final flight was at South Weald, using a new canopy - not the big, stable, square ones I was used to, but a newer, higher-performance model that was longer, thinner, and more twitchy. Going up, it bounced around unnervingly. I wasn’t sure it was going to behave. Still, I flew it, and it descended more slowly, more efficiently.

But when I landed, I had a strange realisation: I could fly these things: I’d done the tricks, the fast turns, vertical spirals, stalls and recoveries - I’d mastered it. But it was going nowhere. It no longer gripped me. So I packed up at the end of the day and never went back. That was the end of my flying.

One final observation. I was always being gently criticised by the club organisers for not hanging around afterward. “We all go to the pub or café, chat, get to know each other,” they’d say, “You never come. We never get to know you.”

And they were right. I had no interest in being friends with them. I just wanted to understand how these machines worked, to master them, and once I had, the fascination faded, just as it always does when you master any piece of equipment.

Collegiality wasn’t my strong suit, and that was plainly a deficiency. It meant I didn’t get as much out of the experience as I might have.

But it did make it easier to walk away.