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00:00Rutland is the smallest historic county in England,
00:03about 25 kilometres across, and a good chunk of that is an artificial lake.
00:07I'm travelling through every county on my road trip
00:09and trying to film something interesting in each of them.
00:12And a new Rutland was always going to be difficult.
00:14You can pretty much fit all of it in one camera shot,
00:17as long as you put the camera in the right place.
00:20So today, I'm going to learn how paragliders fly,
00:24I'm going to try and fit an entire county in one shot,
00:26and I'm going to make this noise.
00:32Which is why I was at a former Royal Air Force base,
00:35was escorted down a couple of the old runways, and met Mick,
00:38who used to be a pilot in the RAF,
00:40and who's now part of the Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association.
00:43This is Mick Rose.
00:44Good morning.
00:44Mick, good morning.
00:45Hello, hello, how are you doing?
00:47I'm good, yourself?
00:47Yeah, very good, excited about this.
00:49Yes.
00:49So am I, first time.
00:51Yeah, the weather's looking good.
00:55All we're going to try and do is wait for this cloud to break
00:58so we can get some sunshine on the ground,
00:59and hopefully then we get a climb out.
01:00But first, the safety briefing,
01:03which mostly went over my head.
01:04Mick would be taking me up on a tandem flight,
01:06I wasn't going to be in control,
01:07but there was one particular bit that I didn't understand at the time.
01:11Who's planning to go XC today?
01:13Yeah.
01:18Going XC is going cross-country,
01:21perhaps hundreds of kilometres, with no engine and no fuel.
01:26And the folks there who wanted to do that weren't certain,
01:29they were tentatively raising their hands,
01:31because the weather that day was just on the boundary of making that possible.
01:35XC wasn't on the cards for me though,
01:37I was just trying to get all to Rutland in one shot.
01:38As you went to set up, Mick explained where the lift for the flight comes from.
01:43Sunshine is coming through,
01:44and we just need a little bit of solar energy to pop the whole thing off,
01:48and then we'll start to get some thermal.
01:50So basically, the Earth heats up a bit and the wind starts moving?
01:53I'm correct.
01:54I don't know much about it.
01:55You get a spot, for example, at this time of the year,
01:58a really good spot is maybe a field that's just been harvested,
02:02so all that nice kind of hard panned ground,
02:05and you've got all those bits of wheat or whatever that are lying there,
02:08or maybe even straw bales, and that will heat up,
02:11and eventually it'll heat up to a certain mass that will be either shifted by the wind
02:16onto some kind of a trigger like building or a tree line that will force it upwards,
02:20and then it kind of goes,
02:21oh, hang on, I'm now warmer than the surrounding air,
02:23and it's going to continue to go upwards,
02:25and that bubble then releases and becomes a thermal.
02:27Sun heats up the ground, ground heats up the air,
02:31air moves, air hits something, air goes up, lifts anything that's in it,
02:35and eventually that lifting air will condense and become a cumulus cloud,
02:38those cotton ball clouds that look like a cartoon in a blue sky.
02:42Paragliders can fly in other conditions sometimes,
02:44but that would be perfect weather for paragliding.
02:48On a good summer's day when you've got that cumulus clouds,
02:50maybe about half the sky is covered in cumulus clouds,
02:54and the rest are blue,
02:55and you've got enough sun being continually on the ground,
02:59so they'll spark off another thermal.
03:00A paraglider pilot's job is to read the sky and the clouds,
03:04all the subtle signs of what everything is doing,
03:06and figure out where that altitude is going to come from.
03:10So a lot of it tends to be a little bit of luck.
03:12You just kind of go, should be good, let's go and see.
03:15Right.
03:15And hopefully if you've got enough height you go, that looks good, that looks good,
03:19and you'll have one or two choices. That's my first choice, that's my second choice,
03:23and then I'm landing.
03:24But hopefully that won't be the case, one of them will kick off and you'll be at the right time.
03:28I've been lucky enough to do quite a few air sports in my time making videos,
03:32and one thing that's always been off-putting is the amount of physical equipment you have to lug,
03:37and the mental workload required before you even get in the air.
03:40And yes, paragliding does involve some equipment and safety checks, of course,
03:44but it was far less than I've ever seen before.
03:47That can't be an entire paraglider in one backpack, can it?
03:50That is the entire paraglider, so you've got the harness set up,
03:53my harness and the passenger harness in front,
03:55and the paraglider, which, where has that gone to?
03:58It's over there, isn't it?
03:59Oh.
04:00Oh yes, he's taken it out.
04:01A paraglider is just a big old nylon wing, about 42 square meters for a tandem.
04:07Solar ones are quite a bit smaller.
04:08I love giving people the experience of flying, because it's just, it is phenomenal.
04:13I love it.
04:15Sorry, I'm going to just move away from you for a moment there.
04:17We've got some parachutes up.
04:20Paragliders.
04:21Paragliders up.
04:22There is an important difference, I'm guessing.
04:24There is an important difference, yes.
04:25A parachute is designed to fit in a small backpack,
04:28so you can descend safely from high altitudes.
04:30A paraglider is designed to generate as much lift as possible.
04:34Its aspect ratio, the difference between its width and length, is much greater.
04:39That's about a six and a half to one, that one that's going up at the moment.
04:42But there's no real structure on that.
04:45There's no structure to it.
04:46It's a sling with a chute over it.
04:48Correct.
04:48The structure is the air being rammed into the leading edge,
04:52and those are the leading edge cells that you can see there.
04:55So the air just rams in there and fills up the wing and gives us some structure.
04:58If we fly through some poor air, and it may actually hit the leading edge in a downward
05:03force, it can actually collapse this, and it ends up killing the actual opening.
05:08Oh.
05:08And basically no air goes in.
05:09Yeah, I'm guessing that's bad.
05:11The tandem is designed to reinflate.
05:14If you just went hands up and did no input, it should reinflate itself within three seconds.
05:19Wow. Okay.
05:20But if it doesn't, then I've got to take some action to go,
05:23this is the problem, this is what I think the corrective action is,
05:26and then correct it to get us back to normal flight.
05:29Mick checked the hundreds of metres of cords, made sure they were all untangled,
05:32did his pre-flight checks and inspections, which, again, were easier than on any aircraft I've ever seen.
05:37He also explained how he steers.
05:39This is what we use to control the wing, so if I pull the right-hand brake handle down,
05:44it will deflect the trailing edge of the wing and literally pull it down into a kind of a curtain,
05:49which just produces drag, and it stops that side from flying or slows it down.
05:54That's a really important safety thing.
05:56While you're turning a paraglider or a parachute,
05:58you increase drag and increase your sink rate.
06:01One of the leading causes of injuries and deaths in air sports is turning too low.
06:07So, when we're flying today, I don't want to see your hands anywhere above this bar.
06:11Okay, that's fine.
06:13Well, I don't want you going up here and kind of pulling on this.
06:16No, absolutely not.
06:17That would not be good.
06:19I can 100% promise you I'm going to follow that instruction.
06:21Probably your hand will be here.
06:23Now, sorry, something's…
06:24Yep.
06:25In the background there is the first take-off of the day.
06:28He's called Nick.
06:29Yes, he's got it.
06:30He's got it.
06:31And while it's not obvious from that camera angle,
06:33he was attached to a winch that was pulling him forward.
06:36Because, you might have noticed, there wasn't much wind on the ground.
06:40So, the initial altitude and speed comes from a mechanical winch at the other end of the field.
06:45You'll hear some radio calls later between the winch and the launch site.
06:48That winch cable has a little parachute on it,
06:51so there's not hundreds of metres of metal cable slamming to the ground
06:55after Nick gets to the top and detaches.
06:58So, he'll get up to probably about 700 or 800 feet on the release.
07:01Wow.
07:02And similarly for us.
07:03Well, he should be coming up to the top of the toe about now,
07:06and you'll just see the parachute drop off as he pulls the release.
07:09And thinks, there we go, that's the parachute off now.
07:11Yep.
07:11The parachute opens.
07:12And he's free flying.
07:13And free to go where he wants.
07:14And hopefully he'll find something, and he'll climb out, and he's gone for the day.
07:18The weather was starting to brighten up.
07:19We could start to see some individual clouds off in the distance,
07:22and more people were launching.
07:24So, how many times have you rigged up a chute like this now?
07:27It's not a chute.
07:28How many times have you rigged up a glider like this?
07:30I corrected myself.
07:31I got myself there.
07:32Paraglider.
07:32Paraglider, not a chute.
07:34Rig this up, oh, I don't know.
07:36I've been a tandem pilot now for six or seven years,
07:39so I think I've done over 300 tandem flights.
07:42And my own personal flight log is probably over 1,000 launches.
07:48I've been doing it for 25 years.
07:50I've got just coming up to 1,000 hours, but I'm also an ex-military pilot,
07:55so I used to fly fast jets in the Air Force, so I am Maverick.
08:00I've talked to a couple of RAF people.
08:02There's no way your nickname was as cool as Maverick.
08:04No, it's not. No, no, it's not.
08:05The one I met was Bog-Eye.
08:07Bog-Eye, yeah, yeah.
08:08My nickname is, well, my surname is Roach, and my nickname is Cockroach.
08:13Right, yeah.
08:14There you go.
08:15There's Nick just getting in.
08:17Nick came back into land because the thermals weren't quite good enough yet.
08:20So just not much up there today yet?
08:23Not yet, because we'd still have that cloud cover.
08:26We just need to get some clear bits of blue so the sun can do its maximum.
08:31We've got to have a day like today.
08:33We've got to have a day where the wind is either nil to kind of light.
08:38If it starts to get moderate and too strong, we're talking about maybe 12 to 15 knots of wind,
08:45then you can't fly because it's too strong.
08:48The wing cannot penetrate.
08:49If you were to get airborne, you'd end up pointing at the wind and actually going backwards,
08:53because it's just pushing you backwards.
08:55So generally, it tends to be a nice summer's day with a light wind.
08:59More paragliders started to take off, more clouds started to form in the sky,
09:03and the day kept getting brighter.
09:05I had a chat to Josh, who was one of the folks trying to go cross-country.
09:08The beep, beep, beeping sound you can hear?
09:10That's the variometer, the vario, and I'll explain that when we're up in the air.
09:14Potential for maybe 100km a day, don't know.
09:17As ever, get up there and find out.
09:19Do you know which direction, or is it?
09:22So north-easterly, the wind's coming from south-westerly,
09:25so hopefully blowing us downwind in that direction,
09:28go with the thermals and see how far we go.
09:31100km from here, that's what, Skegness, somewhere like that?
09:34Mablethorpe.
09:35How do you get back?
09:37That's part of the adventure for me.
09:38It's sort of 50% adventure going out there, see what happens,
09:41and then when you land and you meet all different people.
09:44I've landed in the middle of nowhere before and walked 200 yards
09:47and then got a lift 88km back with a really nice farmer.
09:51And other times I've had to, you know, hike 15km and get a bus for five hours.
09:55All right, well...
09:56So it's luck of the draw and that's all part of the fun.
09:59Did he make it to Mablethorpe?
10:01I don't know, I never found out.
10:02He certainly wasn't back on the ground before I left.
10:04As we got lunch, blue sky started to come through,
10:07so pretty soon it was time to go.
10:10I switched to my 360 camera and suited up.
10:13Right, so, safety equipment.
10:16Several layers of clothes, because it's going to be cold up there.
10:20Gloves, in case I have to grab some wires.
10:23Helmet.
10:23And in case there are issues with the line snapping,
10:28these very fashionable shades.
10:30Looking cool.
10:32Backpack is your harness, your seat, your emergency pack, everything.
10:37Everything is all contained in there, so we're all good to go.
10:40All right.
10:41And if I was going cross-country, I'd have some food in there, some drink, etc.
10:46But we're not going to be up that long, so there's no need for any in-flight refreshments.
10:52We had the right weather, so into the harness.
10:55Like with any tandem air sport, the passenger is on the front.
10:57Mick checked and double-checked everything.
11:00And then we walked to the winch.
11:02If you're ready, we'll just move to the middle,
11:05to where the parachute is.
11:06That's where we're going to position our arms.
11:08I was going to have two responsibilities during the flight.
11:11First, shifting my arms and camera after takeoff and before landing.
11:14And second, pulling the cable to detach us from the winch.
11:19Suddenly, my heart's going.
11:20I wasn't nervous at all until this moment,
11:24where someone is clipping me in and clipping us in.
11:29So that's just connected to the winch here, right?
11:33So, I will have to reach out at some point,
11:36and I will grab the bottom of those two connection points.
11:39We'd like to do a practice release, please.
11:41Okay, so there we go.
11:41So we'll have a bit of tension on it.
11:42It'll be like that to go down there somewhere.
11:45So the commands will be then, prepare to release.
11:47So like it.
11:47Prepare to release.
11:48Release now.
11:50Lovely.
11:50Oh, simple as that.
11:51That's it.
11:51Okay.
11:53Let's get ourselves hooked up and let's do it.
11:55Ah, okay.
11:58Yeah, this went from zero to 100 very quickly.
12:01So, when the line comes into tension, I'm going to say to you,
12:04walk forward.
12:05And I want you to walk forward with purpose and leaning forward, okay?
12:09Don't get...
12:10Leaning forward, really?
12:11Yeah, leaning forward all the time.
12:12If we're pulled back, just accept it, but keep leaning forward.
12:15Okay.
12:16So, last check then.
12:16Let me just have a quick look at your harness.
12:18Yep.
12:18Everything's good.
12:19You got that done up.
12:20You got your gloves, you got your glasses.
12:21Yep.
12:21Let's go and do it.
12:23Oh.
12:23In my green line.
12:24Oh, okay.
12:25You're right, one.
12:26Okay, up slack when you're ready, please.
12:28Take up slack on the green line.
12:30Up slack.
12:31Green line.
12:32Right, so we can see our line of advance.
12:35The line will come in.
12:36When I say walk, we'll just walk forward.
12:38Okay.
12:39Ooh.
12:41Happy?
12:41Yeah.
12:42Okay, good.
12:43Yeah, well.
12:44Okay, walk.
12:45Tension.
12:47Nice.
12:48All out, all out, all out.
12:53Nice.
12:54Nice, nice, nice, nice.
12:55Wow.
12:56Just wait for it, just wait for it.
12:58And relax, please.
12:59So arm, right arm behind.
13:01Right arm behind.
13:02Yeah.
13:02Get your camera, left arm behind.
13:04Get the camera.
13:05Get it through that.
13:07We're good.
13:09Okay, so I can see there's one guy here on the right-hand side that's in the thermal.
13:12So as soon as we come off, we're going to join him on the right-hand side.
13:16Okay.
13:16That's the plan.
13:17I hope my joy is coming through the screen here,
13:20but what might not be obvious is that I'm not really sitting on anything.
13:23Like, there's technically a seat in the harness,
13:25but it feels like just another layer of clothing.
13:28I know I can't fall out of here.
13:30You cannot fall.
13:30I cannot fall.
13:31But I'm going to just give you a little bit of a push to get you a little bit more
13:34comfortable.
13:34Yeah.
13:35Into our business-class seat.
13:37There we go.
13:41You can just see the other paraglider off to our right,
13:44although he's just a few pixels on the camera.
13:46We were getting to the top of the toe,
13:48so it was time for me to pull the release cord.
13:50Okay, Tom, prepare to release.
13:52Preparing to release.
13:52Release now.
13:54Pull.
13:54Lovely, we're done.
13:55Oh my god.
13:56Let go.
13:57We're now free.
13:58Oh, wow.
14:03And we're off.
14:04Fraserberg.
14:07There was suddenly nothing between me and the ground.
14:11That winch had felt like a connection in my head, and I guess it was,
14:15but I was now flying in a way that I have never felt before,
14:20and it was staggering.
14:23There's something just on our right here.
14:25Here we go, it's starting to chirp.
14:26How can you tell?
14:27Here we go, there it is.
14:28We're now in lifting air, but it's very, very small.
14:31Let me explain the beeping from the variometer.
14:33It's pretty simple.
14:34High-pitched beeping means you're ascending.
14:36Low-pitched means you're descending.
14:38The faster the beeps, the faster the climb, or the fall.
14:41There are no visual cues for rising or falling when you're up there,
14:44so after a while you don't really hear the beeps anymore.
14:48It just feels like you instinctively know,
14:51okay, this is what my altitude's doing.
14:53Mick was now trying to find his way into a thermal,
14:56into an updraft of air.
14:58He's in lift, so I'm going to go to him.
15:00I can see he's climbing.
15:01Yes.
15:01We're going to go to him.
15:01Yes, I can see that.
15:02Now we're going to come left.
15:04Why don't you put your right leg over your left, please,
15:05and lean on your left-hand tip.
15:07That's it.
15:08Now we're in lift, and we're still in lift.
15:11This is good.
15:11If we can get another circle in lift, we've now got the core of the thermal.
15:15There we go.
15:16I can feel that.
15:18You can feel it's just been lifted up gently,
15:20and we're going to try now to climb that solo glider.
15:22Oh, yeah.
15:23A tandem out climbing a solo.
15:25Why not?
15:27It's been done.
15:27Oh, that's nice.
15:28Oh, I can feel that.
15:29Yeah.
15:31This is looking good, Thomas.
15:33We like.
15:35We like.
15:36Yep.
15:37We're now going up, let me see, about one metre a second, so that's good.
15:41I realise now I didn't quite follow Mick's instructions there,
15:45I didn't put my right leg over the left,
15:47but the reason I'm holding that position and leaning is to alter both the drag
15:51and the centre of gravity so we can turn faster.
15:54Apologies if the shot is a bit dizzying, but there is a good reason.
15:57Mick is trying to keep us inside the thermal,
15:59inside this little patch of air that is going up so quickly
16:02and taking us along for the ride.
16:04Just a gentle lean on that side, that's all.
16:06Ah, okay.
16:07That's...
16:08Nothing major.
16:09Just helps the efficiency.
16:11And we're now going up at 1.8 metres per second,
16:14and we're passing 1,200 feet above the ground.
16:17And this is just a chimney of air going straight up.
16:20That's it. Just a bubble of air, which we are in the middle of,
16:24taking advantage of all this free, absolutely free, God-given lift.
16:31Oh, I'm just looking down at how, um, how small everyone suddenly looks down.
16:35They're going to get much, much smaller, Tom.
16:38Yeah.
16:39Oh, hello.
16:39And here's the other guys joining us.
16:41Because we've spotted the thermal and they're coming to join us.
16:43Oh, wow.
16:45Note, he's turning left, because we started it.
16:47Because we're turning left.
16:48Yeah, and we're at the top.
16:50And it's a hell of a lot easier to avoid collisions when you're all going the same way.
16:55Yeah, absolutely.
16:56There's no risk of an oncoming paraglider.
16:58No, no.
16:58Here he is.
16:59Oh, we're being out climbed by the solar.
17:00I know, so he's got a better part of the thermal.
17:03So we're going to move over towards his area, and we'll join him.
17:07All right, I'm going to stop leaning to the left.
17:09The weather was near perfect, and we just kept climbing.
17:13So two and a half metres every second.
17:14Two and a half metres a second up.
17:17Yeah.
17:17That is genuinely like elevator speed.
17:19Yeah, we've gone out one side, so we need to just extend slightly towards the lake, I think.
17:23Because I think it's just a little bit more over on this side here.
17:26OK, so that's the town of Stamford, you can see down there, just past the big cement works.
17:30Wait, that's Stamford down there?
17:31That's Stamford down there, yeah.
17:32Oh, I'll wave to Colin Furze.
17:34He's down there somewhere, no doubt.
17:37Mick read the sunlight, the other gliders, the feel of the wing,
17:40and how we were moving about in the air.
17:42And he was able to find thermals through what seemed like magic.
17:45And what really surprised me was it's not a gradual change at the edge of a thermal.
17:50The lift doesn't slowly go away over a few seconds.
17:52When you move out of a thermal, it feels like you've passed through some magic wall.
17:57You feel like you're dropping down just because the updraft goes away like that.
18:01And then you get back into the thermal and off you go.
18:04Find out exactly where the sweet spot is of the thermal to maximise our climb.
18:09Oh, so we've just got to go to the front.
18:10Oh, I felt that.
18:11Oh, we've just got to the front.
18:12A little bit too far forward.
18:14I felt that, though.
18:15So we need to go back into it.
18:16Here we go, we're back into it now.
18:18Then something happened that I hadn't realised that there was something different
18:22from every other time I've been up in the air,
18:25every time I've been fortunate enough to do something like this.
18:31This is incredible!
18:34Wait, it's quiet.
18:36Yeah, nothing.
18:38It is beautiful.
18:40I mean, there's the Vario going, there's us talking to each other,
18:42I'm making the whole thing a bit loud.
18:44That's it.
18:44But for a solo pilot up here, he was able to shout and ask how I'm doing,
18:49and we heard him from, you know, a good distance away.
18:53Yeah.
18:53It was quiet.
18:56There was just the rush of air and the beeping of the Vario,
18:59and that was it.
19:02If you're on your own up there, you're just flying like a bird.
19:07This is now going up at three meters a second.
19:09Three meters a second!
19:10Free, gratis.
19:12No fuel used.
19:12No fuel?
19:13No.
19:14Just natural energy from the sun.
19:18We're so high up.
19:19We're now coming up to, we're over 3,000 feet.
19:233,100 feet.
19:25Oh, hello!
19:27What was that?
19:29We just got a collapse, so we end out to the edge of the thermal and the...
19:32Right, and the wind just deserted it.
19:34The one side did.
19:35Right.
19:36So we're going to go forward now because we're high enough.
19:39We're going to fall out the front of this thermal.
19:41All right.
19:41Not fall, but literally we'll just fly out the front.
19:43You'll feel it going, it might get a little bit choppy.
19:47Oh, yeah it will.
19:48Whoa!
19:50I'm glad I'm not scared of stuff like that anymore.
19:52If this was five years ago, I'd be having a full-on panic.
19:56Yeah.
19:573,000 feet up and no engine.
20:00And there you have it.
20:01All of Rutland in one shot.
20:03Although, as Rutland's only about 25 kilometers across,
20:06if you do the maths, technically you could be on, like,
20:09the roof of a five-story building and see all of it.
20:12I don't think Rutland has many buildings that tall, though.
20:15We'll try and fly out of the cloud now, forward,
20:18and that will naturally put us into sinking air.
20:20Okay.
20:20And if it doesn't sink, I've got techniques to get us down.
20:25Like spiral dives.
20:26Like what?
20:27The spiral dives will happen shortly,
20:29we weren't going to do those at that altitude,
20:31but for every bit of air lifted up,
20:33another will be coming back down towards Earth.
20:37A little bit choppy?
20:38A little bit choppy.
20:39That's because now we're going into big sinking yoke.
20:42Going down at three meters a second now.
20:43Oh, wow.
20:44I've said wow so many times, I don't have a better word for this.
20:47This is inc...
20:48Awesome!
20:49Awesome!
20:51You've taken some Americans up before, right?
20:53Yes.
20:53And this is a kind of a general kind of height that you're flying cross-country.
20:57You'd be up the cloud base.
20:58The cloud base today, if we went up to the cloud base,
21:01would be about 4,500 feet.
21:02So you get up the cloud base.
21:03Wait, we're closer to the clouds than the ground right now.
21:05Oh, yeah, yeah, we are.
21:06And then we'd then set off on a glide and go downwind on a glide,
21:11and then go back up the cloud base again,
21:13hopefully finding another thermal.
21:14And that's the point if you're going cross-country.
21:16You go, sink a little, get some distance, find a thermal.
21:21Yeah.
21:22You want to spend as little time climbing,
21:24so you ideally want to find a nice, strong thermal,
21:26which is going into...
21:27Whoa!
21:28Whoops!
21:28That felt like up.
21:29No, that's just a little,
21:31a little too small column.
21:33You wouldn't be able to turn in that.
21:35That's how they do it.
21:36Up in a thermal, up in a column of air,
21:39glide to the next one.
21:40For hours at a time, for hundreds of kilometres,
21:43if the conditions are perfect.
21:45Which means there was only one thing left to do.
21:48If you really need to descend very quickly,
21:52there is the spiral dive.
21:54Oh, wow.
21:55Now we're going.
21:56Oh, that's some g-force!
21:57Ah!
21:59Oh!
22:03Oh, my word!
22:04You okay?
22:05Oh, good!
22:07And coming back out.
22:08Oh!
22:10So it turns out,
22:13when you pull what felt like 2G,
22:16with a 360 camera on a very long stick.
22:19It was quite heavy.
22:20It's quite heavy.
22:21I've got the wrist strap on,
22:22but audience sort of had an interesting shot there.
22:26What, two, two and a half G that felt like?
22:28Well, let's go now one to the right here.
22:29Okay.
22:30Coming round.
22:30I'm going to brace for this one.
22:33And tucking in.
22:35Go for it!
22:36There we go.
22:38Oh!
22:44And going out slowly.
22:53All good.
22:55Excellent.
22:55As we came in to land, I thought,
22:57I want to do this.
22:59Much as I like flying, I've never learned to parachute or fly a plane or do any air sports,
23:03because it always seems like so much expense and so much effort.
23:07With a plane, you have to learn all the controls and equipment,
23:09you have to pay for fuel every single time,
23:11you have to do so many pre-flight checks,
23:13you have to maintain your flying hours.
23:15It's so much.
23:16With a parachute, you get one jump, maybe a minute of freefall,
23:20and a few minutes of coasting down to the ground,
23:22and then you have to repack everything and take the plane back up.
23:26It's expensive, it's hassle.
23:27The equipment for paragliding fits in two bags?
23:30I'm not going to say it's cheap, but it is far more accessible
23:33than basically any other air sport.
23:35Hundreds of kilometres and the fuel is free.
23:38So I think I might have found myself a new hobby,
23:41because what a joy to be up there for as long as your skill
23:44and the weather allow you to be.
23:46I tucked my arms back through the harness and got ready to land and to run.
23:51Mick warned me about Ground Rush,
23:53the optical illusion of the ground rushing up to meet you as you realise how close it is.
23:58So be ready as the front foot hits the ground,
24:01it should already be running rather than static otherwise.
24:05Otherwise, I'm going to trip over and you're going to trip over.
24:07Correct. It's all going to look very, very ugly.
24:12Oh, you're right about Ground Rush.
24:13All right, here we go.
24:14There's going to be a lot more Ground Rush coming up,
24:16so just be ready for it, but we should be fine.
24:19Should be fine, Lee.
24:21Here we go.
24:21And I've got to accelerate now.
24:22That's coming down.
24:23Just going to accelerate.
24:24Yeah.
24:25Not that much.
24:27We're going to start to slow down about now.
24:29Yeah.
24:30Here we go.
24:31And slowing down, slowing down, slowing down.
24:32And stand up.
24:33Stand up, stand up, stand up.
24:34And move forward, move forward, move forward.
24:36And let the wing come down to the left-hand side.
24:38Look at the wing.
24:39And we'll just let it come down to the left-hand side.
24:41Yeah.
24:42Here it comes.
24:43Collapsing, collapsing, collapsing.
24:45And that's it.
24:46We're done.
24:47Oh, thank you so much.
24:50Pleasure, Tom.
24:50Nearly hit you in the face.
24:51Pleasure, pleasure.
24:52Thank you so, so much.
24:54That was perfect.
24:55That was so good.
24:57That was perfect.
24:57We had a great climb out and, you know, we got up to three grand,
24:59which is just superb.
25:01It doesn't get any better than that.
25:06That's a wrap.
25:07Thank you so much.
25:08Oh, my word.
25:12Next time, can you solve the mystery that I didn't even notice?
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