Extreme IOW Sports

Aug   19
2009

Despite the sad news about the White Air Festival moving to Brighton this year, the Isle of Wight remains an ideal location for a variety of extreme sports.

The North of the Island is excellent for windsurfing or kitesurfing and has sea areas where, with the right tide, you can stand up for a hundred yards or more.Even in a blow, Solent spots rarely get huge waves making them ideal for beginners and intermediate practitioners. The south-east and the more western beaches of the island offer huge dwarfing white cliffs and Atlantic-generated ground swells for the more advanced wind or kitesurfer.

Paragliding is an example of another extreme sport ideally suited to the Isle of Wight and is probably the purest and simplest form of free flight. The unique Isle of Wight weather provides a large number of flying days. Combine that with 12 flying sites within a ten -mile radius and you’ll easily see why the IOW has a reputation as the training ground responsible for most of the UK’s top pilots and has produced British and World Paragliding champions.

The Isle of Wight is much nearer than most people think! A ferry to Isle of Wight takes about 40 minutes and the FastCat passenger ferry from Portsmouth to Ryde only takes about 18 minutes for the Solent crossing. An IOW ferry on the Lymington to Yarmouth crossing takes around 30 minutes.That means door to door from central London can be done in as little as 3 hours maximum (including the ferry crossing).

The ferries are not only speedy, they are also quite frequent and run pretty well every day of the week throughout the year.Isle of Wight ferries will take both passengers and cars and if you fancy a bone jangling but very exhilarating 10 minute ride, then there’s always the hovercraft that flies from Southsea.

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