My Indoor Skydiving Experience

Apologies about the quality of this, it's a screen cap from the in flight video we were given.

For Christmas my family got the gift of an indoor skydiving session, my step sister had been begging my step mum to do this for months and so she finally surprised her (and the rest of the family) with this gift. Finding a time that all of my family was free lead us to have to wait until August to be able to actually partake in this bizarre activity, hence why I am talking about one of my Christmas presents this late in the year.

There are only three centres across the country that offered the experience that my parents had purchased and so the closest one for us was Basingstoke, we had an afternoon flight session so we left at about 11 and made our way there. I didn't know what to expect or what the building would look like but I don't think it reached my expectations on the exterior. It was just a buliding that seemed to be covered in some form of corrugated metal, with a massive taller section (almost like a church steeple or something).

While waiting for our session we got to watch the groups before us in their flight sessions. This really helped to build up the adrenaline for our session, plus watching different peoples facial expressions was pretty priceless. Eventually my group number was called and we we taken into a classroom where we were shown a video of in flight techniques and the hand signals that we would need to look out for from the instructor.

Once we had done this it was time to suit up, they were the basic boiler suits along with a helmet and goggles. Then just before going in we were given ear buds too to ensure that our hearing wasn't ruined while we had wind at a speed of up to 110mph blown at us (it was SO loud!).

I'm not really sure how to describe how it felt other than that it felt as though you were quite literally flying, if you went a little too far to one side then you just gave the glass wall a little push and were put right back into you starting place. On the second go we were offered to do something called a high flyer where we were taken right to the top while spinning around which my sister and I enjoyed but my step mum didn't seem to enjoy as much. This was an extra £5 which we paid at the end but it was so worth it!

To conclude I would really recommend the experience, whether it is for yourself or for someone as a gift it would make such an interesting day out!