Manchester Trip : Hover Force

I didn’t take my camera to this, as I left it secured in Liam’s car as I had enough to worry about, so the above is a promotional photo (admittedly a little dated) from the operator and not one of our group.

I often have very good ideas of things to do some months in advance and then rather regret my bravery when it comes to the event. The zip-lining a couple of years surprised and delighted me, so I thought as a non-driver that I could obviously drive a hovercraft. We arrived at the centre and I’m not going to say that it was the most organised in terms of the clarity of what was happening, but I think that was partly because I was more than a little stressed about all of this. The toilet facilities were also perhaps sub-optimal, but I don’t suppose many people come to events like this and expect sparkling restroom options.

The briefing before hand was a little positive and optimistic for my liking, as I had been intending to potter around at a slow pace whilst I know Liam was planning to fly around at the fastest possible pace. Simon, Ross and Richard had signed up, whilst Łukasz was having a nap in Manchester. The briefing was worrying as I was told that it was really essential to go around at full pace otherwise it might ground to a halt. I did wonder about the engineering quality, but didn’t say anything.

Anyway, the above photo is me in action and against all my initial fears, I rather enjoyed it. Actually, I very much enjoyed it and it was mentioned that some drivers struggle with handling as hovercraft, unsurprisingly, don’t handle the same as cars. I didn’t have that burden placed on me and I thought that it was all quite logical. To be precise, that’s Liam watching over me to ensure that I don’t go flying off course, this is something that he has to do generally in life which is why I rather liked this photo. There are two sets of two laps, the first one I think I was against Simon and then the second time against Liam.

Liam’s effort at a video of me. I had expected a brilliantly edited sixty second video with audio, but this will have to do. It all went quickly and, fortunately, I didn’t veer off course too much. There is audio from the instructors as you have to wear goggles and a headset, but one set was much easier to hear than the other so I was in blissful ignorance during one of my attempts. It’s more physical than I had realised, although not too demanding, it’s the getting it going again after coming to a halt that’s the most labour intensive part of the arrangements.

I did a full length video of Richard and Liam (using Liam’s phone), so I’ll see if I can get that uploaded. Here’s Richard during his briefing. It’s fair to say (and he’ll read this) that he struggled a little with the whole hover craft steering thing, which meant that the head to head between Richard and Liam couldn’t be timed as Richard was going so slowly and Liam was going so fast they had to keep stopping him and making him wait.

Liam provided us with this photo, but I’m waiting on photos of the others.