Paragliders and hang gliders have been soaring through the Lake District’s skies since the early 70s.
On sunny days it’s almost a guarantee to see at least one paraglider flying over a Lake District peak like Blencathra or Skiddaw or further afield over coastlines at villages like St Bees.
It’s a sport that is both firmly part of Cumbrian culture and one that is also an exciting spectacle for lucky locals and tourists alike.
Mike Williams, 60, of Keswick, has been paragliding since the 80s and has flown all across the Lakes and overseas in places like Italy, Spain and North Macedonia.
He is also membership secretary for the Cumbria Soaring Club – a hang gliding and paragliding club set up by father and son team Roy and Dennis Richards, from Workington, that has been running for over 50 years.
Mike, who has been flying for over 30 years, said paragliding has become a big part of his life.
He added: “I’ve been flying since 1989 and I think what started me off was a poster I had in college.
“Everybody used to put posters on their walls in their rooms and I had one that I’ve still got now and it was a hang glider flying over a beach in California.
“I just thought it was amazing and I remember thinking, I had to do it when I left college and got a job.
“I originally wanted to do hang gliding, which looks like a paper airplane delta, but they’re quite heavy and they take up a lot of space.
“But there was this thing called paragliding and at the time it was like carrying around a free fall parachute and was a lot easier than a hang glider.
“So in 1989 I bought a paraglider, went on a course and I got my training licence in the Peak District.”
After spending years flying in the Peak District as well as Snowdonia, the Lake District and on club trips abroad, Mike moved to Cumbria in 2017.
Mike worked in a paragliding shop in Keswick before he retired just after the pandemic and he now works as a mountain leader.
He said: “The Lake District is the best place to fly, it’s absolutely fantastic.
“You get views of the countryside that you just don’t get from any other sport, it’s just incredible.
“So when my wife and I moved up here, I joined the club and they asked me to be membership secretary, which I’ve now been for three years.
“It’s a fantastic club and I’ve met so many good friends. It’s so much better flying with friends. The club is a really important part of my life now.”
Mike said while paragliding might look scary to spectators – after a lot of practice and training, for paragliders, it can actually be a relaxing and serene experience in the sky.
He added: “I think a lot of people say I would never do that, it’s too scary, and think we’re mad or something.
“You can get nervous, especially when you haven’t flown as much, but I try get around that by ground handling (using equipment to keep the wing stable in wind overhead on the ground) and getting that feeling back and getting familiar with the equipment.
“When you’re a beginner the equipment is very simple and the glider is simple, but when you’re more into it, the equipment is more complex and more efficient, so it takes more to master it and remember how to use it properly.
“But when it’s fantastic weather you can fly for three hours at a time and in summer with warm air and rising air thermals (rising columns of warm air), you’re looking for them to maximise goal of where you want to fly to.
“So you could fly from Keswick off Jenkin Hill on Skiddaw and try make it to Kendal in that direction and then get the bus back, it’s just absolutely fantastic.
“I’ve got two paragliders and one very small one that is three and a half kilos. So you can walk up a hill, fly off, walk up another and fly off it again and we call that hike and fly, and the Lake District is really good for that.”
Mike said that the club has good relationships with farmers and landowners and has a list of suitable sites for paragliders as well as rules for the way they should conduct themselves when they’re out flying and landing in fields or parks.
Mike said: “We’re so grateful to landowners and farmers because we’ve got to set off and land somewhere and we always try to be as respectful as possible when we’re setting off and landing.”
Mike added that it’s also common to end up with a small audience before taking off from a fell.
He said: “People are always fascinated, I mean you’re walking up a hill with these bags that are quite big, they’re about 90 litres in size and people always ask if you’re going camping.
“Paragliding rucksacks normally weigh between 10kg to 15kg and that’s a lot lighter than a hang glider.
“When you get to the top and start unzipping your bags they will stop and wait around for you to take off, which is a little bit of pressure!
“But landing in Crow Park kids are always amazed to see you.”
Paragliding can also be a physically exerting experience, depending on weather conditions.
Mike said: “It depends what weather is doing. If you’re doing a simple fly down off Skiddaw down to Fitz Park on a balmy summer evening, it’s really gentle, you always get a rush of air, but it’s just like riding a bicycle and you have a helmet to keep your ears warm.
“Then there are other days where people might see paragliders going round and round in circles and what they’re trying to do is take advantage of the rising air they’ve found at that point.
“That can be quite bumpy and rough but you’re really zoned in to try and get the most out of that lift to get as high as you can to get somewhere else.
“So there’s a lot of concentration and you’re working hard then when you’re flying straight you relax, then you can have a drink using your drink system, depending on how long your flight is.”
Mike added that flying with other people is a special part of the sport.
He said: “You land together and you’ve all got that same buzz, you have a talk about flights and if someone didn’t get as far as the others.
“Or you meet them back on bus as you go home when people land out at different points and you pick them up as you go.
“But people will keep in contact and they can organise to say if there’s a south easterly wind flow, you can start off at Parlick Fell down near Preston and then try and get back to the Lake District by cross country flying.
“Some of the very competitive people will look at the weather forecast for hours at a time.”
While the Lake District is a picturesque location for flying, it does also come with its own challenges.
Mike said: “The Lake District is unusual because it’s very crinkly and compact and that means you’ve got a lot of faces of hills and mountains that face different directions.
“When you’re flying a paraglider, the weather has to be dry and not raining and the wind has to be not too windy or gusty, up to 15mph, and you want to find a hill where the wind is coming up the face of it.
“Living in Keswick it’s very tempting to never move away because there’s so many sites that have perfect wind direction close by.
“But it isn’t all that easy to fly because you’ve got lots of terrain and on a hot and sunny day air comes in from the sea which can kill the lift.”
“isnt that easy to fly cos lots of terrain and on a hot and sunny day the air comes in from sea and kills the lift.”
Mike said his favourite locations are south-westerly facing hills and fells as the UK mainly south-westerly winds.
He added: “Jenkin Hill on the way to Skiddaw is a nice on and Blease on Blencathra is a Southerly one and then there’s Clough Head, which is North-westerly and all of them are different.
“From Clough Head you can do what’s called the milk run and fly down the Helvellyn ridge all the way down to Grasmere, lots of people do that one.
“But we also have club social nights through year and you hear from people what they’ve done and people often do the Wainwrights by flying and one guy did the Bob Graham round by flying to every peak.
“They’re fantastic pilots, such skilled people and so adventurous with it.”
Safety is also a big part of the sport and those who have any accidents or incidents while flying are encouraged to report it to the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association to help others stay safe in the skies.
Mike said: “Safety is really important thing, obviously it’s not the only sport where it’s potentially dangerous if things go wrong, but if you do it right and in a disciplined way it’s good fun and really safe.
For anyone who wants to do paragliding the main thing is to go to a proper school. The British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association sanction schools.
“We have two schools in the Keswick area, we’ve got Air Ventures with Gordie Oliver and Escape Paragliding with Jocky Sanderson and they both teach complete beginners.
“We do occasionally have people who’ve bought old kit on Ebay and try to teach themselves and that is not a good idea.
“Flying with others is also easier so people should really join their local club and make friends that way and learn much more.”
Cumbria Soaring Club has a total of 270 members, half of which live in Cumbria while the other half live elsewhere.
The youngest members are in their late teens while the oldest are in their 80s. A majority of members are men but around eight per cent are women.
Mike said: “It all started off with people buying American hang gliders and running them off the local Cumbrian hills.
“We still have club members who were originally part of that scene. Hang gliders were everything and then in the 80s the first paragliders came on the scene.
“They’ve become so efficient now and easy to use and fly so well that 98 per cent of our membership are paragliders. We hardly have any hang gliders anymore.”
The club also runs the popular Lakes Charity Classic paragliding competition, which has been taking place every June in Grasmere since 1990.
Mike has done the Lakes Charity Classic for seven years and the X-Lakes a total of three times.
Mike said: “It’s been going for a long time and last year I think we raised £6,000 for 12 local charities and we’ll do the same again this year.
“It’s fantastic because it brings so many different people from down the country and from other countries together.
“There’s two types of competition. One is where a task is set and you have to try and fly through imaginary circles in the sky to reach a goal and then there’s another one that’s a hike and fly called the X-Lakes.
“The X-Lakes is where you have to bag as many points as you can and the points are the Wainwrights.
“So there’s a one and two day event and each Wainwright has a different amount of points depending on how far they are from Grasmere as you have to get back to there at the end of the challenge.
“Some people will do virtually all of the Wainwrights in two days by flying instead of walking.
“We also have a presence at Grasmere Show and we do an accuracy competition whilst all the wrestling and car shows and fell running is going on, we’ll be flying nearby and trying to spot land in the next field.”
