What is Paragliding?
Paragliding is the simplest and purest form of flying there is. Whether you dream of soaring above the hills, or taking your canopy on holiday with you to explore exotic locations from the air, Extreme Sports Cafe help you.

Paragliders were developed from freefall parachutes and have been refined to make them easy to fly with the best possible performance whilst keeping them small enough to carry in a backpack. As you take off with the canopy above your head, you feel the irresistible freedom of the skies. Experience it for yourself - the excitement of learning to fly is within your grasp.

In sensible hands, paragliding can be amongst the safest of adventure sports. The expertise you need to keep you safe starts with the school you learn with. We aim to equip you not only with excellent flying skills, but also with the knowledge to keep you flying safely whilst having fun!

" Unlike other foreign flying centres our partner Spain Paragliding Center is an Official Registered School With the British Paragliding Association(BHPA), which means courses taken with them guarantee British Qualifications that will immediately allow you to fly in the UK, no need for conversion days when you return and all instructors are BHPA registered and trained too."

Paragliding Algodonales
Algodonales sits at the bottom of a fantastic 2,400ft mountain, Lijar. For years it has been a famous centre for paragliding and hang gliding in Southern Spain, the ‘Governor Valedares’ of Europe. Lijar is open to most wind directions and just to make life a little easier there is a fairly large local population of eagles and vultures, which, if not marking thermals, will surely be joining you in yours at some point. Flying at Lijar can start as late as 2pm as we wait for the sun to be fully on the S/W launch so expect plenty of mid afternoon to sunset flying.

However we generally head up the hill at ten thirty, for the early Xc hounds, the South Easterly offers good and early opportunities to get up and off. Algodonales is also within an easy thirty minutes drive of another five cracking flying sites. The coast is but an hour away and offers two other easy coastal sites and a potential 20k dune run!

Algodonales is surrounded by a combination of both lakes and mountain ranges, which run from Granada and the Sierra Nevada in the East to Gibralta and Jerez in the Southwest. To the north are the flatlands running towards Seville.

In spring the mountain range is a backdrop to a blaze of colour, Spring starts early in the year and by April the fields are adorned with a variety of crops and the supermarkets are filled with strawberries!. By the end of May the sunflowers are out and the heat of the sun is getting to all year highs and the Spanish have either retreated to the coast or to Algodonales’s lake. August and September bring sunflower harvesting and long lazy siestas.

We offer these courses in Algodonales Spain;

Learn to Paraglide CP and EP, Basic guiding, Pilot Thermalling course & Cross Country.

Paragliding Course - Elementary Pilot equivalent (EP) £650 1 week Inc accommodation

Competency; Beginner

We follow the British syllabus and some, which should take roughly 3- 4 full days but with weather on our side and more days available to teach we aim to get you to a higher than usual standard.

The first couple of days will be either spent at the beach or on nearby slopes learning to kite and confidently launch our glider in both alpine and cross brake reverse launch techniques.

By the end of the two days you will have a good feeling for the pitch and roll of your glider and making short solo flights from no more than 50 – 100 feet. The next two days will be aimed at improving glider control in turns of 90 - 180 degrees and figure of eight flying patterns from heights of around 300 - 400 ft either using towing or from smaller hills.

When you have comfortably satisfied all these aspects of flying we will progress up to the larger hills and mountains surrounding Algodonales. The practical side of the Elementary course will be completed here, on hills between 500ft – 2000ft. Your last couple of flights will see you making confident site assessments, demonstrate good controlled launches, co-ordinated turns and safe and sensible landings, completely unassisted.
The week will be broken up by simple theory lectures on Air Law, Flight Theory and Meteorology of which there will be a simple multiple-choice exam at the end.
At this point you will have completed your Elementary pilot qualification and will be ready to progress on to your Club Pilot course. You can either continue into the second week completing the Club pilot course or book another week when it suits.

The Club Pilot Pargliding course (CP) £650
1 week Inc accommodation
Competency; Beginner

This follows more or less the same as the British qualification, whether you are picking up where you left of with us or coming from another school. Depending on how current you are we will initially concentrate on some essential basics.
We will spend some time making sure you have good and comfortable skills in Alpine and reverse launching our glider.

You will then be fully equipped with a fitted reserve and radio on all flights. The radio is for coaching in glider skills and maneuvers only or when flying on much larger sites where a simple flight to the landing field might take up to 15 minutes. Our aim is to produce a freethinking pilot not a radio controlled one so radios are there mostly as a safety and coaching aid.

Our aim for this course is to teach you the finer points of flying. We would expect you by the end of the week to be both confident and conversant with soaring, pitch control and utilising available lift (i.e. some basic thermalling) and top landing where appropriate, Big Ears decent technique, accelerator systems & circuit landings, 360's and possible rhythmic turns.

The week will be broken up with slightly more in depth lectures on Weather, Flight theory and Air law with a multiple choice exam at the end of the week.

Pilot Thermalling Courses £350 Inc, accommodation & retrieve 1 week.
Competency; Beginner/Intermediate

 

We are currently running Pilot thermalling courses in Spain & Tenerife. Spain offers outstanding scenery and a great climate throughout early spring and autumn and when it gets less reliable over the darkest months of winter we head further south to Tenerife, as it’s the most reliable thermalling resort for flying within easy access to Britain.
The courses are geared to those who want to learn more about thermalling,as well as completing some of their tasks to wards achieving your pilot rating. As well as daily lectures and debriefings, there will be thorough site, task and pre-flight briefings. The courses are tailored to each persons abilities with coaching in the air as well as from take off and are suitable for the very new pilot abroad as well as the slightly more hardened.

Basic Guiding & Cross Country Courses £350
Inc guiding, accommodation & retrieve 1 week.
Competency; Intermediate/Advanced

Cross country weeks are set mostly in and around one of most highly recognised flying areas in southern Spain. Algodonales has been a Mecca to Hang gliding and paragliding in Andalucia for twenty years.

The area makes for quite superb flying. From March to October it offers excellent thermalling conditions and great cross-country opportunities for both the new and experienced flyer.

Local pilots from as far as Cadiz, Cordoba and Granada flock here on weekends to pursue personal bests and distance records. Experienced local pilot Baz Rhodes set a site Altitude record here end of last August for 15,000ft and that’s with a tandem passenger…!
The last trip we ran here back in late September, we flew an average of 20 – 40k per day and finished our last day of the week with a 60k flight.

We do occasionally have guest pilots visit to run flying clinics, this year we have Russell Ogden 2003 British champion and a big fan of Algodonales, running a course here in April and possibly Mid September.

Paragliding Safety
Safety is paramount to the sport of paragliding. It is important to understand that paragliding can be a dangerous sport. The potential is there to do yourself some real harm. However both Instructors and current paragliding pilots alike already appreciate the importance of sensible and progressive pace setting in tuition, tasks and future improvement. Paragliding can be and generally is as safe as you choose to make it. Like the car driver who takes a corner in wet or icy conditions at high speed, the statistics favor the driver to drives to the conditions of the road.

Please bear in mind some basic reading is always handy prior to the lectures. These are the suggested Books, which can be purchased on line at Amazon.com. Just follow the links in the descriptions below...

(Paragliding) From the Beginner to Cross Country by David Sollom & Matthew Cook An introduction to paragliding, providing tuition on thermalling, instrumentation and tandem flying. Other topics include: the theory of gliding; practical instruction of basic, intermediate and advanced techniques; instruction on flying cross-country in the UK; and advice on equipment and air law.

Touching Cloudbase by Ian Currer The third edition of a standard manual for those starting paragliding. It offers an introduction to Paramotoring, a section on tandem flying, and an expanded reference to the world's manufacturers. It also covers the syllabus for the exams of the British Hang-gliding and Paragliding Association.

(Paragliding) The Complete Guide by Noel Whittall A guide to paragliding which introduces the basic techniques and then provides information about training schools, equipment, the rules, weather, soaring, competition flying, and how to derive enjoyment from the sport.

Flights, transfers and Transport -
Ah yes pleasantly as cheap as chips, between £20 - £35 for an Easyjet flight from Gatwick (one way) or about a £80 - £125 Rtn with most other carriers. (Last Call Flights, Flight Line)

We will happily organise an airport pickup from Malaga at an additional cost of 40-60 Euros/journey.

If you land as a group of between 4- 7 we will pick you up from the airport free.

There is also a bus, which runs outside the front of the main doors of Malaga Airport every 15 minutes to the Central bus depot. A bus from there to Algodonales or Ronda costs at most 10 Euros and takes about 1.5- 2hrs, is very comfortable and an easy way to get here.

At the Airport hire cars are also available from many a broker at roughly 70 – 150 Euro/week

Accommodation
You will be in apartments in the village of Algodonales. Prices are based on two sharing a room, though do ask if you would prefer a room to yourself or want to bring a partner or family member etc. There are a fair selection of lovely tapas bars and restaurants, all mostly open into the early hours of the morning... how very civilised. Breakfast is usually in a local café on the square. We will grab lunch en route between flying.
The area is both rich in history and has a host of other activities from biking to kite surfing, canoeing and horse riding. Just at the foot of Lijar and the village is a beautiful lake you can swim or while away time reading. There really is plenty to do. There are some of the oldest cave paintings in Europe just around the corner, plus massive amounts of mountainside to walk or climb.

Most of our equipment is sold during tuition...
We appreciate that when you first come to paragliding it is very difficult to comprehend the differences between one glider and another. Paragliding manufacture has made such huge steps in safety, manufacturing and design that it is now fairly difficult to buy a truly bad new first glider, although there are occasional dubious second hand gliders lurking on Internet auction rooms. With the choice being so huge these days its worth asking your instructor what glider would suit your weight and you’re flying environment. Safety is always going to be paramount to us and we spend much of the early season trying out new equipment and test flying gliders.

Important Notes!!!
You will need to have a current E111 (from any UK Post office) and medical and repatriation insurance for your time here. We can recommend Harrison Beaumont. It is essential that you have both these items, as without them you will be unable to undertake the course. We are supported with an almost negligible liability. So we strongly recommend that you also have a personal accident policy, it’s worth having if your employment doesn’t cover sickness cover, in the event of any possible injuries and your families’ peace of mind (Generally available from your bank or most financial advisors).

We can send you a Harrison Beaumont PDF insurance pack or you can download a copy here. All the details of policies, full explanations and a simple to use application form are included.

All are welcome. Of course there will be an accommodation supplement for partners and children. Algodonales is a stunningly beautiful area. Reflexology, Homeopathy, horse riding, kitesurfing, Picnics’, canoeing on the lake, stunning restaurants, charming bars and beautiful white hillside villages of Andalucia, everything is out there to do and explore.

CP & EP Courses- €60 for your license and membership to the Spanish Federation, FENDA.
Non-flyers, there is a £100 supplement for non-flyers.
All holidays are inclusive of Accommodation and retrieve.