'You're not a hen," says Mike, a wiry no-nonsense Yorkshireman who has been given the task of getting me airborne."So, this time, I want you to try to do it without flapping your arms."
We're standing on a hillside at Compton Bay, a tranquil spot on the western edge of the Isle of Wight. The sun's beating down, there's a light breeze coming in from the sea - perfect for learning to paraglide - and we've all just been taught the "parachute landing fall" in the unlikely event of anything going wrong; make the mistake of landing with the wind behind you, we're told, and you can hit the ground at 40mph.
Mike stands in front of me as I pull on the straps attached to the 27 square metres of canopy rustling about on the slope behind me. The leading edge lifts up, catches the wind and suddenly the entire canopy swells into life. The next thing I know he's pulling me down the hill yelling: "Run! Run! Run!" With all the grace of a duck-billed platypus, I perform a sort of slow motion dash down the hill and then the impossible happens: I take off. I fly.
Okay, I might only have stayed up for a couple of minutes, but two hours earlier I was floundering about this hillside thinking the cows in the neighbouring field had more chance of getting airborne. There were eight in our group, every one a beginner and none of us particularly fit, but soon we were taking off shakily from the top of the slope and landing at the bottom stunned and exhilarated by what we had achieved. All it seemed to need was a little nerve - and a fair bit of sweat.
Paragliding
Paragliding, a cross between parachuting and hang-gliding, began in the Alps in the mid-80s. "It was invented by French hillclimbers who wanted a quick way of getting down the mountains in time for the all-important dinner ," says Phil Keen, of High Adventure, the Isle of Wight's paragliding and hang-gliding centre.
With no less than 12 flying sites catering for all wind directions, the Isle of Wight is used as a training ground by many of the UK's top paragliders. British champion Barney Barnes and world record holder Sarah Fenwick both live here.
We took a breather over lunch then it was time for the big one - a flight over the brilliant white cliffs that stretch from Compton Bay down to the Needles, the famous narrow chalk rocks stretching out into the sea. This is advanced stuff, so we flew with an instructor in a tandem paraglider sporting an enormous canopy - it felt like Sydney Opera House had unfurled above our heads.
With the right conditions, paragliders can rise at 10m a second, which is almost like being catapulted into the clouds. We couldn't quite manage that but we did get up to about 600ft, high enough to look right over to the other side of the island, at the countless yachts nodding lazily through the Solent.
As I sat back in the harness watching the shadows of clouds drifting across the island, a seagull appeared to our left, rising with us in the updraught. Below us was the beach where a dinosaur footprint was discovered. A little further up the coast, ramblers walking along the coastline stopped to wave up at us and cars slowed down for a better look at these two human beings hanging in the air. When we touched down bumpily about 30 minutes later, I'd already decided to come back and have a go at the two-day introductory course (£125, or £150 at weekends).
Extreme sports
The Isle of Wight is often seen as a sleepy mecca for senior citizens ("Loos to stay open after OAP power wins the day," was a front page story in the Isle of Wight County Press while we were there), but now it's seeking to reinvent itself as an extreme sports paradise. It already has the full-on sailing and partying mayhem of Cowes Week (which actually lasts a fortnight) at the beginning of August. But now companies such as First Contact are gathering together the other adrenaline-pumping attractions of the island - paragliding, mountain biking, jetskiing, canoeing, shooting, paintballing, sailing, horseriding, ribbing - and putting them into tailor-made packages for thrill-seekers who have neither the time nor the money to travel abroad for their fun.
Ribbing
One of the biggest new Isle of Wight crazes is ribbing. Ribs are Rigid Inflatable Boats with seriously powerful engines at the back and seriously deranged skippers at the front. It's fairly simple. You step in, sit down and cling on for dear life. The engine whines like it's about to explode and you go thundering across the waves, pounding into the breakers like a big rubber mallet. You don't stop screaming till you're back on dry land.
Shooting
After that, when they said they'd booked us in for clay-pigeon shooting, I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd given us machine-guns and told us the pigeons would be shooting back.
David and Gerry, a charming pair of country gents in cravats and wellies, met us at the top of a gully with the words: "Right, into the jungle then!" Two 12-bore, double-barrelled shotguns were produced and we did four different kinds of shoot - grouse, pheasant, duck and partridge - the size, speed and flight pattern of the clay disks varying to imitate each type of bird (partridge is the smallest and the fastest).
The trick is to follow the target through the sights then, just when it's in range, aim a little ahead - or, according to the Shooting Times, imagine the bird is wearing a top hat and aim for that.
Getting there
The train from London to Portsmouth took about 90 minutes, and the Wightlink ferry crossing another 35 - but by the time you're on the Isle of Wight, the mainland bustle and rush seems much further away. We stayed in the sedate village of Ventnor on the south coast, where the microclimate of moist air and plenty of sunshine has resulted in a semi-tropical landscape.
The four-star Royal Hotel, perched at the top of the bay, proved the perfect place to unwind after a hard day's high-octane fun. But even in this peaceful place, the new extreme-sports face of the Isle of Wight seems to be emerging: I took a stroll down to Ventnor beach and saw a couple of surfers riding the waves. And, on the way back up, I passed a granny wearing a pair of Nike Air Max trainers.
