There’s a one in 653,000 chance of death when you do a tandem skydive in the UK and there were reportedly no fatalities in the 20 years between 1997 and 2016. Statistically, that’s much safer than hiking. I knew all this, but that didn’t stop me from thinking about death approximately 19 times a day in the weeks leading up to my jump.
The possibilities of death, it seemed, were endless. I had dreams of my eyeballs being sucked out of my head while falling at a hundred miles per hour and of Storm Darragh pushing me off course into the icy waters of the North Sea. I’d had dark thoughts about the parachute being unable to go up; darker thoughts of a bird crashing into me as it travelled south for winter and toppling to my grave in a pile of feathers, beak and blood.
I have a fear of heights. It’s not unreasonable, it doesn’t restrict my daily life, but it is very much there. It’s the impending drop which gets me: the empty space, the threat of gravity, uninterrupted. I hate jumping off cliffs into bodies of water and looking down from the tops of tall buildings makes my stomach turn. If I think too much about it, I start to feel a dizzying panic, a walls-closing-in sort of anxiety, like the floor could give away at any minute. A skydive would be a chance to prove to myself that, while not completely ridiculous, this fear was irrational in most scenarios.
UK Parachuting has two centres: one in Peterborough, closer to London, and another in Beccles, near the east Suffolk coast, which is where I’d be jumping. Just in August, a 102-year-old woman became the oldest skydiver in Britain at the same airfield.
It was an early start on the Saturday of the jump. My alarm went off at 6.30am to catch the train from Liverpool Street to Beccles via Ipswich. I wore sports clothes: trainers, leggings, layered jumpers and gloves (because it was December). After a two and a bit hour journey, I arrived in Beccles – a small, classic English town in Suffolk – and called a local cab to the airfield.
The parachuting centre was on a rugged, nondescript industrial estate with a large air hanger, a small portacabin reception, Portaloos and a glass-fronted café where you could sit in the warmth and watch parachuters land on the grass while sipping your coffee. I registered, signed my life away (read: completed the safety forms), decided I wanted photos taken in the air, then waited. My arrival time was scheduled for 10am but the conditions were still grey and cloudy. The wait was long and heavy, filled only with intense overthinking about the impending drop.
Just as I was starting to get impatient, the clouds subsided, opening to blue skies and crisp winter sun by midday. An earlier group’s plane took off and soon enough, I spotted a small dot in the sky, and then another, and another. Soon, the sky was full of them, dots morphing into human-like shapes, gliding, spinning, curling and silently landing from the sky. It looked calm; almost enjoyable. More fool me.
Soon after they landed, our group got into our jumpsuits (this was mostly to protect our own clothing from dirt when landing) and met our tandem instructors for a safety briefing (my main takeaways were: keep your head back when jumping, don’t grab the arms of the instructor and land on your bum with your legs up). My instructor was a big, burly man who was previously a firefighter in the RAF for 15 years. He did this now ‘for fun’. He was reassuring, but practical and brisk: he would take no nonsense and no cowards. By this point, I was feeling mildly sick, and starting to regret my cheese and tomato breakfast pastry from Pret that morning.
By this point, there was little time left to fuck around or chicken out. Before anyone in our group had the chance to overthink, we were climbing on board the plane – a small thing with windows either side and not much room to move around inside – before getting strapped onto our instructor, putting our goggles on and practising the jumping position, all while ascending 13,000 feet high into the sky. From the window, you could see the curvature of the earth peaking out from under the clouds. All I could think now was: absolutely fuck my life.
Things moved fast, like autoplay in a video game. Strapped to my instructor, we wriggled down the plane and soon he was the only thing left between me, the aircraft, and the icy air of death. I put my head back, as instructed, crossed my arms on either shoulder, and closed my eyes (there was no way I was looking down). My stomach felt like it was being turned inside out. On the count of three, we jumped.
Going skydiving in the UK in December is not for the faint of heart: sub-zero winds hurl at a brain-churning velocity, blasting your ears like a wailing evil demon welcoming you into hell. The sheer force of the fall ripples your face and insides of your mouth and your skin will feel like it could tear off at any moment. The free fall – the bit without the parachute open – lasted for about 40 seconds. But seconds move differently up there. It is slow, and there is a lot of time for regret.
Instantly, the panic set in. Acting only out of instinct, with no rational thought or appreciation for the moment, I struggled in the air, almost like I was trying to wriggle out of my harness (don’t do that). I kicked my legs up and down (don’t do that) and tried to grab hold of my instructor’s hands, as though he was a human ladder I could use to climb back into the plane (definitely don’t do that). He had to pin me down, and once he had my arms, my legs started going. Exhilarating? Yes. In a very bad way.
The parachute finally went up with a loud ‘poof’ and it all went silent. ‘All okay,’ he said calmly, and clarity came back: I could think, I could breathe, I could see. In fact, I’d never seen England look so good. The coastline curved in real time, its long stretch of sand and grey waters bending like being inside a fish eye lens. Different shades of green stretched for miles and tiny moving dots glided like ants on squiggly lines. It was stunning, surreal, but terrifying.
Just as I was getting somewhat comfortable, we went through a cloud and everything went white: like being engulfed in dry ice at a gig but with no dance floor under your feet, only metres and metres of nothingness. I was back in panic mode and all I wanted was to be back on land. Having a fear of heights is not irrational, I thought: this shit is still completely terrifying.
Obviously, I had nothing to worry about. These guys are proper professionals who do dozens of tandem jumps every week: you’re in extremely safe hands. After around six minutes and some gentle steering on the way down, I pushed my legs up and we landed safely on our bums, alive, on the beautiful earth. There were no encounters with birds.
I was in a daze for the rest of the day, walking around in shock, remembering the pure, untamed terror of the free fall. Was it a good experience? It was excellent, in the same way that watching Silence of the Lambs is excellent, or eating noodles with too much Sichuan chilli pepper. Would I do it all again? Absolutely fucking not.
Tandem Skydive at Beccles airfield with UK Parachuting is available to buy at Buyagift from £199.
Time Out travelled as guests of Buyagift. Our reviews and recommendations have been editorially independent since 1968. For more, see our editorial guidelines.
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