A mate and I went to BASE jump Beachy Head last week but the winds were a little over what we were happy with, so my buddy decided to take his speed wing off the cliff instead!
It’s a 13m Pilpit and its fast as fook!
We could see rotors on the cliffs edge as there was also a light crosswind, but he was still happy to take his speed wing over the edge. He is very experienced, 1000+ flights in the Swiss valley, and has taken this wing off Beachy Head previously.
I have never seen Beachy Head looking so STUNNING before!
Beachy Head is one of the most beautiful places in the world, it's just a shame people tend to associate it with suicides and idiots taking selfies too close to the edge and going over...
I purposely didn’t want to use a click bait title, as I want this post to be about good times, and I don't want to draw more attention to Beachy Head because of its history of suicides. But if you have read this far then you are not here to read about suicides, so I will detail below what happened.
My friend and I went there to celebrate life once again, and on that day last week there were two suicides. My friend found a body at the bottom once he landed his speed wing…not a very nice thing to have to witness. I didn’t notice from the top that there was a body on the ground as I won't go near the edge without a BASE rig on. (I did later see it on my drone footage though).
We called the coast guard as soon as my mate got back to the car park after doing the 1 hour walk back after his jump. There is ZERO mobile phone reception down at the bottom of Beachy Head and I also had his phone so I could call his partner in case he had an accident…this is something that most basejumpers will do, nevertheless phones are useless at the bottom.
While I was waiting for my friend to walk back up, I decided to pack my parachute at the Birling Gap as it was a nice day and it was still a little damp from the last jump I had done the day before.
As I was packing I noticed a young male (approx. late twenties) collapse in the car park. Some people were helping him, so I continued to pack. After 10mins or so he got up off the floor, and sort of shoved those helping him up away. I thought this was a little odd, so kept an eye on him.
He started to walk up Beachy head road holding a jumper. He had come from the top of the birling gap cliff (the tourist walk towards Beachy Head) to begin with before he collapsed, and now he was walking up the road. He then was crossing the road and back again while looking behind at us over his shoulder. I continued to pack, then I noticed he jumped a fence with the sheep in and started to walk up the hill towards the cliffs again. It was at this point and went and got a National Trust employee and asked them to call it in, he showed all the signals of someone contemplating something silly.
Speculating, I believe he may have been on the cliff most of the night deciding whether to jump off, then he has woken up and decided to walk down, collapsed as no food or water for hours, then has decided to turn around and try again. (This is what I thought at the time, and still do think the same).
I spoke with the National Trust who didn’t seem to give a shit, they had the attitude of "well, what can you do?" I said "I want to help, I am not going to sit here and let that happen, are you going to call it in or am I going to have to chase after him?" …he agreed to call it in and get the suicide watch people up to him.
I felt better, at least something is being done.
Meanwhile, my buddy walks up to me from his jump, we high five etc. Then he says he needs my phone RIGHT NOW and explained that there was a body at the bottom. Once he had called it in, he explained that there were two locals having a BBQ at the bottom of the cliff in the landing area. He told them that there was a body less than 20ft from where they were sat, to which they replied "Yeah we know, we came here for a BBQ and that’s what we are doing to do, we'll let someone know about it later, it happens all the time".
I got angry when I heard this, as did my mate. Fucking locals having zero sympathy, cunts! It's ok obviously as it's not their son/daughter face down in the rocks.
Anyway I finished packing and we had a coastguard come and tap us on the shoulder asking if we had called a body in. They then asked us to come back up to the top and show them from the top where the body was as the helicopter was unable to find it.
After 25mins or so they had a rope access team locate it from the top with binoculars, and guess what, as this was happening someone else jumped, a guy with a baseball cap. They don’t know if he 'jumped' or slipped, but he went over. This was further along the cliff, not in our visual range.
Me and a mate think we may know who it was as we saw two foreigners getting to close to the edge as we were setting up the drone and my mates speed wing earlier, and I told them "CAN YOU GET AWAY FROM THERE", the cliff crumbles and you could go over, "plus you are making me feel un easy", one of them agreed and wished us a good jump, that was it, never saw them again. We'll never know if it was one of them that went over as loads of people wear baseball caps, but I hope it wasn’t one of them.
If this wasn't enough, remember the guy I mentioned earlier? Guess what?
He is now on the cliff edge being talked down.
Jesus fucking Christ! What the fuck is going on today?
I am glad they got someone to him, they had to call in air support from the Solent, and there were cops and coastguards everywhere.
We left as we didn’t want to hang around, my mate was still super gutted he saw a dead body and I certainly didn’t want to hang around and witness a suicide.
Not a great end to a nice afternoon but at least my mates jump went well and we helped out where we could.
Thanks for watching and reading!
THIS IS NOT AN INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO, I AM NOT A BASE JUMPING OR SPEED FLYING INSTRUCTOR. IT IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. DO NOT GO AND ATTEMPT TO TAKE ANYTHING OFF A CLIFF, LET ALONE JUMP OFF ONE BECAUSE YOU SAW MY POST.
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