Last updated 12:50, Wednesday, 07 May 2008

You could drive, coach, bike, pony trek, and of course, walk to enjoy the scenery of Cumbria.What started as purely a descent sport is now a cross-country pursuit and more recently, acrobatics have become popular.

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But probably the best, most uncrowded and least stressful way is to soar up high, alongside the hawks and buzzards.

The thermals and a summer breeze do all the work as you float across the fells and glide over glistening lakes, away from the tramp of boots and toots of jams and queues.

And while you’re up there, it doesn’t cost you a penny – though travelling back can be another matter...

Look up on most calm, sunny days – certainly most calm, sunny weekends and you’ll spot a paraglider lazily spiralling as they catch a thermal or drifting off across a fellside.

Chances are they are filming their flight, with their mind’s eye, ready for replaying over a quiet pint in a pub or on a winter’s night back home.

“You go to such a unique place when you get up high,” beams Gordie Oliver, gazing into his pint at some fond-remembered scene.

“It is such a unique position, being taken up by the power of nature, rather than by a big, fat, noisy engine.

“The Lake District looks completely different and as you fly you have a video in your mind and when you play it back at night, it is all there again.”

He gulps at the glass, tasting his memory.

“A thermal can have the equivalent power of three or four express trains.

“You can climb at 1,000ft a minute, nearly double the speed a light aircraft can climb at.”

Gordie runs his Air Ventures paragliding school from his home in Bassenthwaite and would-be pilots from across the north-west as well as Glasgow and Edinburgh are drawn to the picture-book village to learn.

The bird man of Bassenthwaite does most of his work at nearby Binsey and Bewaldeth, just a few miles up the road (or a short glide, if the commute along a country lane seems too stressful).

While there is theory and map-reading to learn, he prefers to teach his students, literally in harness.

As northern sites officer for the Cumbria Soaring Club, Gordie’s key job is to liaise with around 40 local farmers and landowners to make sure members are allowed to access their land and to check with the RSPB that no bird of prey nesting sites are disturbed.

The son of one of the Lake District’s first national park wardens, he was one of the first to take up the sport in the mid 80s.

He had been learning to fly gliders, but then started to read about a crazy French alpine climber called Jean-Marc Boivin who would fly down the Eiger, Jungfrau and Mont Blanc and who took just 11 minutes to fly down from the peak of Everest in 1988.

For a 20-year-old steeped in adrenaline sports such as skiing and rock climbing, leaping off a hillside with a length of nylon sheet strapped to your back seemed only natural.

He took some basic tuition and on only his second flight managed to soar.

Gordie grins at his first flying memory: “When I landed, the bloke I was with said ‘how did you do that?’

“It was man’s oldest dream realised. I have still got that video in here,” he says, tapping his head. “It will never leave. I have taught every outdoor sport going and there is nothing like it.

“In the early days it was dodgy, that is where the risk sport reputation comes from.

“A lot of guys did smash themselves up by taking off in the wrong weather or from unsuitable sites. Fortunately quite a few survived and developed the sport.”

The devil-may-care pioneering spirit lives on among groups like the CSC, but now everything has to be properly certified and registered.

The first distance record set was 50 miles, within two years that had been stretched to the 125-mark and now it is almost 300 miles.

While Cumbria is home to some of the best flying in the UK, paragliders are prepared to travel anywhere in the country to fly.

Workington roofer Martin Sandwith last year beat off the challenge from 160 other pilots to claim the UK paragliding championship for the most miles flown in single flights.

The league takes into account your best six flights and Martin totalled 458 miles in his half dozen.

Two summer flights were in the region of 80 miles each as he took off from the Long Mynd ridge, near Birmingham.

But paragliders are not just fair weather fliers.

As long as the wind is not too strong (anything under 15 knots is ideal) they will strap themselves into their harnesses.

The record from the top of Binsey is to Hexham – an impressive 50-odd miles – and according to Gordie: “That was on a day when you would think twice about taking your dog out for a walk.”

The wings weigh between five and 20 kilos and pack into a rucksack for the bus or train or hitch-hike home.

Safety is paramount and it is drummed into any would-be pilots.

Generally speaking, the higher you go, the safer you are, with flights averaging heights of 4-5,000ft.

“If you are low down, it is like being in a river with all the stones and obstacles to beware of and it can get quite choppy,” he frowns.

“The higher you go, often the smoother it gets.”

Improvements in technology since the early days have made the canopies and harnesses lighter, stronger and safer, ensuring a steady flow of new faces to the sport.

A decent second hand kit can be £500, with a top-of-the-range new canopy around £2,000.

Learning to fly takes eight to 10 days and can cost from about £800 up to £1,500, but after the initial lay-out you only have to pay travel costs to your launch and landing sites.

A regularly-serviced canopy can safely fly for between 500 and 600 hours and most pilots manage about 50 hours a year.

In the 18 years since his first take-off, Gordie has only crashed once – and that was test-flying a new canopy.

There are about 7,000 members of the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association and Gordie trains up to 30 people a year, on top of the hundreds he takes on ‘tandem’ or ‘taster’ flights.

He reckons he has the best job in the world in the best place possible, adding: “There is no sport like it, the learners might just fly a few feet on their first take-off, but it’s great to see the look on their faces.

“We don’t always get the best flying weather up here, but it is worth waiting for and you can get an amazing variety of conditions in just one day.

“We are world-renowned and the topography and conditions makes for some of the best pilots in the world.”

For more information, go to www.cumbriasoaringclub.co.uk or www.airventures.co.uk; or call Gordie Oliver on 07830 281 986.