Fond Memories of Cark

I said in a blog a while ago that I'd say a bit more about the dropzone were Craig and I met. The Northwest Parachute Center (Cark) is in the Lake District of England.

My mate Sue and I did a tandem skydive there in 1994 and loved it so much we signed up for a course. During the day we'd sit and wait for the wind to drop below 10mph so we could jump (actually we'd pray it wouldn't), and then at night we'd party like banshees before collapsing into the shared bunkhouse. You had to be really drunk to sleep in the bunkhouse or the spiders and man-smells would have kept you awake all night. Oh, the days!

Craig had been going to Cark for longer and had done a lot of jumps by the time I got there. He was on a 4-way team and went on to do camera work. We literally spent every weekend there until 1999 when we came to the States.

Our friends ranged from 17 years old to 70, from millionaires to vagabonds (yes you, Roy Liptrott) and doctors to students. Basically, when you're about to go and throw yourself out of an airplane, no one cares what you do Monday to Friday or how much your car cost.

When we went home in 2005 we went to visit. Here's a few pictures I took.

There's far too many stories to tell them all, so I'm going to pick one for Craig and one for me:

Craig is a legend at Cark because both his parachutes failed & he walked (limped) away. He was jumping an old rag of a parachute that should have been burned (actually he did set fire to it later). His main chute had a line-over, so he cut it away and got his reserve out. His reserve opened and 3 of the panels blew out (like I said, old rag). So, he was spinning at a crazy rate towards the earth thinking that his chips were up. He told me he felt lonely. His friend Tony was flying next to him. When he saw Craig's main chute he shouted "get off it!", when he saw the reserve he shouted "get back on it!" You have to admit that's funny. Anyway. Craig, by fantastic luck, landed in a soft, ploughed field and walked away. I didn't know him then. I'm glad I didn't.

I am a legend in Spain. When we got married in 96 Craig and I had our honeymoon at Skydive Empuriabrava. Craig jumped for fun and I did a course to qualify to jump on my own. After I graduated, on the very first jump on my own, the engine blew up. The jump master, Bruno Brokken, was fabulous and made me feel okay. I mean, we're getting out of the plane anyway right? He said to me "stay away from the runway" because the pilot had to glide the plane in. I thought he said "stay away from the dropzone". So, I jumped out and I pulled my chute very high up at 5,000 feet so I could get carried by the wind as far from the dropzone as possible. Craig was on the ground, watching. To follow my progress, he used binoculars, then the telemeters, then the dropzone sent out a light aircraft to look for me. All the while, Craig's thinking "where is she GOING?" Turns out I was going to France. Three hours later, sat on the dropzone bus and covered in corn husks I made it back to the dropzone to raptuous applause and lots of ribbing. I have a VHS video of this and would love to get it converted to DVD some day.

I have tagged on 2 videos. One is of the guys that we know on the canopy rotation team, Zero Tolerance, at Cark, and one is a promo video for Empuria. It's a bit long at 10 mins but good fun to watch.