After a few thousand tandem flights, the same handful of surprises come up again and again. Here they are in advance.
It is colder than you think. Every hundred metres of altitude costs you roughly two thirds of a degree. From launch to the top of a good thermal, that adds up. Bring the jacket.
Your ears will pop. Six hundred metres of descent in a few minutes does that. Yawning or swallowing sorts it out immediately.
There is no stomach drop. The falling sensation people brace for comes from acceleration downwards. A paraglider launch is a transition into forward flight, not a fall, so it simply never arrives.
The turns feel bigger than they are. A gentle 30-degree bank feels dramatic when there is nothing around you. Your pilot will start gently and ask before doing anything more spirited.
You will want to go again. Roughly a third of our tandem passengers come back within the year, and a decent number of those end up on the training slope. Consider yourself warned.
