Cliff leaps bring adrenaline rush

By Jo Manning
BBC News

Coasteering involves jumping into the sea from cliff ledges

It was early on a Sunday, I'd just spent my second night under canvas and the delights of the pub in St Davids were still weighing heavy on my mind.

So perhaps hurling myself into the Irish Sea from a Pembrokeshire cliff ledge while it was blowing a gale was not such a great idea?

But it was too late. I'd stuffed myself into a wetsuit, helmet and buoyancy aid and was on my way to the cliffs with a coasteering group leader who had just dubbed me "Chips". I'll explain why later.

Coasteering, for the uninitiated, involves jumping from ledges of varying heights into the sea. You also get to do a bit of climbing and traversing across the rocks. And of course, you get your hair wet with a bit of a swim and a play in the waves.

It is best enjoyed by newcomers in a group led by experts who know where all the deep bits, hidden rocks and skin-shredding barnacles are. They are also aware of the tide times and most importantly, are strong enough to haul great sodden lumps like me out of the water!

What it definitely isn't is "tomb stoning". This is a banned phrase on our particular expedition, and one which has recently been associated by the media with the non-supervised activity of jumping into the sea from extremely high heights.

In some cases, jumping into shallow water has led to death and injury for tomb stoners.

It can take people years to become the leader of a group Ross Beese, TYF Adventures

TYF Adventures in St Davids have been taking groups coasteering around the Pembrokeshire coast for the last 22 years.

Ross Beese, customer services manager for the firm, said all of the sites used in their tours were risk-assessed, the weather conditions were monitored twice a day and all their leaders were qualified lifeguards with first aid training.

"We also do in-house training and it can take people years to become the leader of a group," he said.

Undoubtedly coasteering is dangerous. We'd met a stag party in the pub the night before who described their day coasteering as "brilliant" before dropping in that one of their party was in hospital having broken his leg after catching it on a rock.

"It happens," said Ross. "Coasteering is an adventure sport and there are going to be times when things like that happen. We try to control it as best we can. We have a fantastic safety record.

"The man who broke his leg unfortunately jumped too far and he caught his leg awkwardly on a rock. We have done thousands of jumps from that ledge without any problem at all."

We certainly had some heart-stopping moments on our trip.

A coasteerer takes the plunge

My first plunge was into this churning, bubbling finger of sea between two rather jagged-looking rock formations.

Our leaders had christened this section "the toilet" because of the way the water rushed in and drained out from the cliff face.

And when you were at sea level faced with some of these waves which crashed over you, buffeting you into rocks and under water, it certainly got the old adrenaline pumping. In fact it was terrifying!

After a few minutes in "the toilet" and, according to the others, completely disappearing from view on a few occasions, I'd decided I'd had enough.

After struggling back onto dry-ish land I had to have a few quiet moments on the barnacles getting my heart rate back to normal and the sea water out of my lungs.

And then there were the jumps. I'm not the biggest fan of heights and sheer drops so I screamed like a teenager watching Halloween before, during and after my first one.

But after a while, it felt easier, almost natural to step off ledges which were 3m to 7m (9.8ft to 23ft) in height.

Well to be honest I didn't quite make it to 7m. Got a bit of the fear there. But there was no pressure to take the plunge if you didn't fancy it and plenty of other lower ledges from which to jump from.

The longer it went on the more my confidence grew and I really began enjoying myself. I was honestly gutted when our instructors said it was time to head back.

Our very wet, rather tired coasteering group at the end of a great morning

Physically it was quite tough and I don't think we'd realised just how much it had taken out of us until we got back to the camp and began chowing down on the biggest picnic ever. This was followed by an impromptu nap.

So why was I called Chips? Well before we set off our team leader had asked us to introduce ourselves by saying what our favourite food was.

It being early on a Sunday and everything, the only thing I could think of to say was "chips".

Apparently the food thing was easier for our leader to remember than names so for the next four hours, chips was my monicker.

I'm only glad I didn't pick my real favourite which is a piping hot Cornish pasty. Doesn't slip off the tongue quite so easily does it!