Bassano is a wonderful site. A 15km ridge with relatively straight forward transitions to other long ridges makes the XC potential fantastic. Also as it is in the Italian Dolomites spring tends to arrive sooner than in the Alps making it flyable earlier in the year. I headed to Bassano in March with Xander, this was my first season flying in the mountains in the spring. I knew it would be strong but didn't expect to feel the fear in the way in which I did. Over the 5 days in Bassano we flew every day, I found it to be quite bumpy at times, so over the days experimented with taking off earlier ..read more

Waking up in the beautiful airbnb and having a delicious breakfast on the roof top in the sunshine was a perfect start to the day. The first stop was the Bahia Palace. Famed for its beautiful tiling and rich history it was wonderful to walk around and explore. Going early meant we avoided long ticket ques and the palace wasn’t too busy. Next we walked through a park and along the city wall towards to tanneries. The Tanneries are open air factories where leather is dyed. Upon arrival we were somewhat mobbed by men trying to give us mint (it’s their way of getting your custom, once you are hold ..read more

This Janurary I went to Lanzarote for a bit of winter paragliding. It was fantastic; a few hours from London, cheap car hire and spectacular sites made it a perfect winter get away. I was there for just three full days and managed to fly on all of these days at four different sites. I went to Lanzarote with fellow pilots Xander and Tom, we stayed with the with the wonderful Zan at Villa Amatista, a lovely villa with numerous rooms situated in the centre of the island. Also in Lanzarote was the Flight Culture team who were at the end of their trip, we managed to cross over for a few days. A big ..read more

Confidence in both oneself and the gear we use is pretty important for a successful and happy flight. Three years into my paragliding journey I suddenly lost confidence in both myself and my gear. In this post I want to look into this and build a plan to get that confidence back. Why is confidence it important? Confidence in paragliding is the feeling and belief that one can rely in or have faith in oneself as well the equipment used to fly. Without confidence the sport would be pretty un-enjoyable. Imagine second guessing every decision made during a flight or constantly thinking you are goi ..read more

Originally posted in Instagram. Once again I have a post that I am a little unsure of sharing, social media is so full of the positives and lets face it, my paragliding pictures tend to show the beauty of the sport. I love flying and love being in the air, and naturally I want to progress. And, as a result have pushed. In November this led to me throwing my reserve, luckily over water and under training. But still, it knocked my confidence and made me question whether I actually have the skill set required to become a good pilot. I was in Oludeniz for 10 days, the first few days were spent fre ..read more

UPDATE I realise I haven’t written anything for a while, so much has happened since my last post and I have so many learnings and experiences to share. In this post I’ll give a brief overview of what I have been up to since July 2018 and where I am now. Over the coming weeks will write additional posts explaining in more details the key parts. June/July - XC Progress After spending a week in Annecy in June and doing a couple of 50km flights I knew I had to go back. So towards the end of July I went back for 10 days. I had a few days flying alone before my flying buddy arrived. The days flying ..read more

I wrote a post a while ago about my first cross country hurdle (getting over my fear of landing out). Since returning to paragliding my mindset has completely changed. Previously when I attempted an XC I would still feel somewhat anxious. Because I had got over the fear of landing out, I didn't even realise it. This resulted in very few attempts to actually fly XC. It's not until now that I realise I was anxious about all the uncertainties that come with XC flying. In this post I will take a look at four key things that give me peace of mind whilst flying XC. Checking Out The Route Beforehand ..read more

Getting back into paragliding after a break is difficult for a lot of us. Once I had gone through the mental process of deciding I wanted to fly again I needed to figure out how to go about it safely. In this post I aim to highlight how I returned to paragliding after a long winter break. Goals I love setting goals and when returning to any sport it is important to set realistic goals, this will give focus and prevent you from getting frustrated or disappointing. My goals were; Get as much flying in over the course of a week. Become comfortable on my new wing (I jumped from the Niviuk Koyot 2 ..read more

Saransk is over 600km from Moscow and is the capital city of Mordovia. In 2018 it will be one of the host cities for the FIFA world cup. With a return flight costs less than £15 I spent one day and one night there exploring with my lovely friend Hayley. Door to door it took 4 hours to get from Moscow to Saransk, the flight was 1.5 hours and we took a taxi from the airport to the hostel. In Saransk there is a taxi App called Maxim which seems to be a small town equivalent to Uber. Once in the town we checked early into our hostel, Hostel Klyuch. A small hostel with the most welcoming owners, th ..read more

Sochi is a Russian city full of surprises. With 300 days of sunshine a year, a subtropical climate and palm trees lining the streets, I couldn’t quite believe that this was the host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. One thing I didn’t know until I went there was that the Olympic village is actually in the neighbouring town of Adler rather than Sochi. This makes for quite possibly the easiest 2 days trip I have done. Adler is a 10 minute, £1.50 taxi ride from the airport. Day 1 Door to door it took five hours and £80 to travel the 1500+km from Moscow to Sochi. Arriving at the wonderful Sunkiss Hoste ..read more