Guide to Barbados paraglide holidays

Barbados is a lively Caribbean holiday island with plenty of heart and plenty to see. The island is fringed by lovely beaches, with a green, hilly interior. The hills run right down to the coast, making for good paragliding opportunities. While Barbados is mostly fairly flat, with its highest peak being Mount Hillaby at 336m, it does offer some nice flying in good conditions.

A Barbados paragliding flight is all about soaring over the coasts and cliffs, and enjoying an aerial view of the sugar cane fields and Barbadian villages that package tourists rarely get to see. Barbados is only 34 km long, and 23 km wide, so it’s possible to cover huge areas of it in a single flight.

The College Savannah site is a cliff-top site that is perfect for coastal flying. The conditions are relatively gentle, and it’s easy to land on the beach if you can’t make it back up to the cliff-top. A little further north is Cove Bay, a much tougher prospect that offers experienced flyers a challenge: below the cliff is just rocks without a beach, so it’s vital that you land on the cliff! A little further inland you can launch off some of the island’s gentle hills and fly from there to the coast, or explore the plantations and their rambling mansion houses from the air.

Beginners should find plenty of opportunities to take a tandem flight and get to grips with flying in Barbados, while the more experienced can take their own wing and explore the island easily. There is plenty going on in Barbados to distract its visitors, but a Barbados paragliding trip over the Caribbean Sea has to be near the top of anyone’s list.