“whatever happens, just keep running.”
Ah, I think, that’s
a statement right out of my nightmares. It sounds even
more ominous as the man yelling it is currently strapped
to my back. As if that’s not enough, he has a giant rotator
blade strapped to his shoulders.
Ignoring the tingling in my stomach, I force my legs to
move as fast as possible. My fleece-lined onesie flaps
around my knees as the lawnmower-like fan bellows.
Suddenly, it’s as though my belly button has been
yanked from behind. Then, painlessly yet swiftly, we are
flung back and begin soaring upwards.
“You can stop running now,” advises my companion
– instructor Kester Haynes – with a chuckle. I look down
at my still-flapping legs and beyond towards the Earth,
where the Wiltshire fields we were just running on have
already become a patchwork of greens, yellows and
browns, some 150m below. It certainly makes a change
from sitting at my desk.
What an exhilarating welcome this has been to the
world of paramotoring. Effectively a turbo-charged
version of paragliding, the addition of a petrol-motored
propeller means you can spend far longer in the air in
lowwind – up to three hours on a full tank – than that
unpowered variety. Taking off from a hill isn’t necessary
either, and because you need very little breeze to gain
height, it can be done virtually anywhere.
Add the fact that you don’t need a licence to fly one of
these machines, and that the entire kit, right down to a
helmet, costs less than €10,000, and it’s easy to see why
the sport has, ahem, really taken off in recent years.
Certainly, it seems to be soaring fromwhere I am
right now. High above, an entire flock of adrenaline
junkies are circling like brightly coloured hawks.
Among them is Gilo Cardozo, 33, founder of Britain’s
foremost paramotoring company, Parajet. An aviation
and engineering nut, Cardozo says he acquired his first
paramotor at the age of 14, in the early days of the sport.
“I spent hours trying to fix it up,” Cardozo had told me
earlier, “only to crash it straight away.”
Instantly besotted, the budding inventor acquired
more machines before eventually turning his attention
to building them from scratch. Then, in 2001, after
recruiting friend Jim Edmondson to “take care of the
business side”, he launched Parajet, a firm specialising in
the manufacturing of lightweight personal aircraft.
O N T H E S C E N E
B R I S T O L
Don’t look
down
Like Red Bull, the latest extreme sport
gives you wings. But what’s paramotoring
really like?
Vicky Lane
went to find out
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