I’m running off a cliff at the top of a mountain, much like Wil E. Coyote in the Roadrunner. Unlike him, however, I continue out over the edge and keep going, even as I look down and ponder the gaping abyss opening up below me. I can fly. How did this happen?

I’ve come to the south of the Pyrenees, to the highlands of Catalonia. Ager, a sleepy hamlet on a hillock inside a bowl of a valley is the HQ of Passion Paragliding, and I’m here to qualify as a Club Pilot. It’s been almost two years since I got my first taste of flying under a canopy (at the other end of the Iberian peninsula), and I am keen but nervous – the last time a stroke of bad luck saw me rupturing a muscle in my behind – a bummer if ever there was one – and I’m not up for a repeat performance!

We’re a motley little crew that’s gathered in this remote location under the tutelage of Toby (the sweet and funny man whose outfit this is) and his handsome Catalonian sidekick Ganis (pronounced tantalizingly akin to Janice): apart from me there’s Dana, half Persian and all English, a clever and determined bloke, editor of medical research papers, and very much a kindred spirit, and then there’s Andrew, retired lecturer in economics at a community college, who is almost comically slow on the uptake and forever apologetic, apart from on the topic of Brexit, of which he reveals himself to be a dyed-in-the-wool, staunch supporter, bless him (although he admits to not having kept up with the news at all over the last six months, as it upsets him too much).

Then there are the CP plussers – a bright young guy from Bahrain called Khalid who says little but takes in everything, and a Northern lass named Jackie, both of whom are significantly more experienced than us – and finally there are the cling-ons, as Toby calls them – Jackie’s boyfriend John, who is semi-retired and lives for paragliding and in a camper that is a mix between a luxury aircraft and the bat cave, Jan, a very straightforward and ditto talkative woman of a certain age who travels the paragliding circuit and plies massages and more to fliers, and finally Rob, a lovely giant teddy bear of a man who is an old student of Toby’s. All of them hang out with us and go up the mountain with us, and prove to be more or less helpful to our learning efforts.

Alas, the first couple of days the winds aren’t cooperating, so we spend a lot of time on theory, of which there is plenty, and ground handling, which is difficult at the best of time and even more so in gusty winds – the canopy is quick to go off at a tangent if you’re not very meticulous and careful with your movements. (One particularly vicious gust catches me off-guard, and drags me across the unforgivingly gravelly dirt, meaning I get my battle scars early, and the others a good laugh.)

Andrew is meticulous to the point of just standing stock still, meditating over his wing, but on the other hand he does practice his movements with an imaginary canopy outside the local bar, which raises a few Catalan eyebrows, as he parries and dances with his non-existent glider. Happily, the locals are accustomed to the antics of the paragliding community, so they are quite tolerant – the wingéd people bring in a lot of sorely needed tourist money, after all.

We continue on, and it is frustrating at times, but we’re gradually improving, picking up little tricks here and there – even Andrew starts to get it. And after a few days of this, the wind eases off, and suddenly we are driving up to the ridge that forms the edge of the bowl-like valley, some 600 meters below.

We start out taking off with the help of Ganis, but even then it’s a daunting thing to willfully throw yourself off a mountain, and things can go wrong even at the best of times; Dana has to abort several attempts, and Andrew manages to switch off the radio during one of his first flight. To make matters worse he goes flying off on in the opposite direction to what was agreed, which has the usually sanguine Toby cursing the sky blue in the LZ. I’m no exception: in my second attempt the wind drops off just as I’m running towards the edge and I dive forward into the scree, my bird imitation more penguin than eagle. Add more battle scars.

After that I’m a little bit apprehensive, but Rob provides a much-needed pep talk, so I carry on and fly twice more that evening. Thankfully all the ground handling pays off, which means that towards the end of the week I can get the canopy off the ground with relative ease, and then finally – on the last day – I reach the point where I can balance it in the winds over my head with a degree of precision that allows me to literally step off the mountain and into the air. The trees and jagged rocks fall away, and I soar out over the sun-kissed landscape and into the air high above olive groves and pig farms and fincas. The buzzards are thermalling as I glide off into the sunset, and I feel as if I am one of them.

The week flew by (pun intended) and I’m not even sorry the fickle winds didn’t enable us to get enough flights in to get our certificates, because this way we get to go back and do it again. I can’t wait!