People say: “you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep.” So as you can imagine I have some pretty crazy individuals in my life, that I like to call friends.
Ashleigh is definitely the more adventurous person in our clique. It was no surprise, therefore, that she wanted to do a 15,000ft skydive for her 21st birthday and anyone fearless enough could join her.
Being the good friends we are, we thought it was completely reasonable to jump out of a plane for the celebration of the birth of our friend.
To ensure we didn’t chicken out, we decided to raise money for Birmingham St Mary’s Hospice which is a charity that means a lot to my best friend Hannah. We had already paid for the dive ourselves and therefore, had nothing to lose, except we had two weeks from the time I arrived back from my inter-railing trip, to raise our targeted amount of £1000.
The initial skydive was supposed to take place on the 2nd May, but because of the weather it was moved to the 4th. Ultimately the change of date had us all panicking that there was some kind of bad omen and it just wasn’t meant to be.
Luckily we did manage to do the dive on the following Monday and although I was completely terrified from the walk leaving the base, to the plane, that feeling was completely worth it.
You’re given a brief of what to expect and what you need to do during the dive but by the time you come to do it, you feel like you’ve forgotten everything and your whole body feels like jelly, (well mine did).
As my instructor moved us to the open door of the plane, it’s safe to say that every bit of excitement had turned to fear and I was mortified at the fact I was actually doing it. Within seconds of being in front of the open door, we were flung out into the open sky and spinning through the air. The actual free falling from the plane lasted under a minute and I spent the next 10 minutes or so, floating down to the ground. The view was incredible and I literally couldn’t stop smiling at how amazing it felt.
Without hesitation, I would do the jump again and I would suggest anyone contemplating a tandem dive to do so! I was genuinely on a complete high for the whole drive home and for pretty much the rest of the week.
Birmingham St Mary’s’ excellent treatment and services with one of Hannah’s closest family members is the reasoning for why we chose to support the charity. We successfully managed to raise £1098.01 through our Justgiving page, which was then matched by BP with a donation of £1078.01– bringing our grand total to £2176.02.
We’d just like to say a massive thank you to everybody that did donate and help us raise a substantial amount in such a short time period and also to our friend Ashleigh, who inspired us to do so. All of the money raised is definitely going to a fantastic cause and to commemorate our jumps, our good friend Hezzron Austin created a short video of both of our experiences. Enjoy!
