A Paragliding Paralympian at Highlands End

On Saturday 30^th July Highlands End visitors had an exciting front row seat as the Coast Guard performed a daring winch operation to recover a group of paragliders stranded at the bottom of Thorncombe Beacon.

Many of our visitors are aware that, through our long association with the local paragliding club, we provide a small area adjacent to the cliff to be used as a launch and landing zone. It’s a popular spot, where pilots can take off right from the South West Coast Path and fly along the coastline towards West Bay and Burton Bradstock or the other direction, towards Thorncombe Beacon, Golden Cap and even as far as Charmouth if conditions are right.

The launch area at Eype is also used by the local flying school Flying Frenzy, who have been teaching people to fly here in West Dorset for almost 30 years. They, along with another local tandem operator, Eddie Colfox of SkySafaris, also provide the opportunity for disabled people to get into the air on a tandem paragliding adventure along the Jurassic Coast under the control of an experienced pilot. This is all made possible by the charity Flyability who co-ordinate the flight and raise money to purchase the specially designed buggy necessary for the tandem flights. Pilots, ground crew and flying school all give their time for free.

Andrew Pearse, Chief Flying Instructor of Flying Frenzy, commented “I am so proud of Flying Frenzy’s involvement in Flyability. Giving people who have lived their lives with limited mobility the freedom of the sky is just one of my greatest achievements. It is not easy but is so worth while.”

On this particular day, the adventurer was better known than most; Deanna Coates MBE (Di), an amazing woman who has just retired from coaching top level competitive sports shooting. She is also a multi gold medal-winning Paralympian having competed in 8 Paralympic Games herself.

Her pilot for the day was Peter Holdy of Flying Frenzy and after a safety briefing, crash helmets were donned and Peter and Di took to the air. Unfortunately, the flight was short as the wind was not ideal and they had to land back at launch to wait for more favourable conditions. An hour or two later, and with all the solo paragliders taking to the air again, the pair took off and headed for Thorncombe Beacon. All went well until the wind, required to keep the glider aloft, dropped unusually rapidly leaving Peter losing height with cliffs on one side and sea on the other.

Avoiding injury in paragliding is often about making the right decision quickly and Peter immediately identified he only had one option to land safely – a small flat, reed covered area at the base of the cliff. Executing a tricky landing, he brought Di onto the plateau for a perfect touch down. Two other pilots (Richie Taylor and Roy Menage), having seen the pair landing, also landed and went to their assistance. Richie’s video montage of the events that followed can be seen below.

The ground crew had spotted the landing and it was clear that Di would need some assistance to get safely back to the launch site. The only real chance of that happening was with the assistance of the emergency services and so the call was made.

The first response was the local air ambulance, which managed to land on a small patch of beach just below the plateau. The paramedics checked everybody over and thankfully, nobody was injured. Unfortunately, they couldn’t assist Di out as they had no winch capability. Lyme Regis Lifeboat crews were also called and Coast guard cliff rescue confirmed they were not able to help so it was time to call in the “big” Search and Rescue helicopter from Lee on Solent.

On arrival they assessed the situation and soon started winching to bring Di, Peter, and Richie plus their paragliding gear back to launch, landing in our field next to our South Rye Acres touring and camping area as a crowd watched on.

Di, completely unfazed by the whole whole day, wore a big smile on her face and ended up getting not only a paraglider flight but a helicopter trip as well.

Our thanks go to the air ambulance crew, Lyme Regis RNLI, Coastguard cliff rescue crews, SAR helicopter crew and everybody else involved in the days events.

It’s important to remember that, while paragliding is obviously a dangerous sport, pilots are highly trained and incidents like this are infrequent.

You can watch all the action that takes place at the Eype launch site by viewing our livestream webcam. It’s great for checking the weather conditions in the air and on the sea, and you can watch some fantastic sunsets from it too!