Never one to shy away from a challenge when it comes to charity, Brian quite literally flew up to new levels and soared the skies to raise money for charity. Promoted as being not for the faint-hearted and one of THE most extreme things you will ever do in your lifetime, daredevil Brian took to the skies to complete his Loop-the-Loop wing walking experience. Brian’s challenge involved climbing 2500 feet before taking on a loop-the-loop and two vertical climb air stalls! Check out the footage of Brian’s Loop-the-Loop wing walking experience above!

Blue run/ Easy (Novice / Intermediary): Able to snowplough, turn confidently and parallel slightly Red run/ Medium (Advanced intermediate): Able to link together short radius parallel turns. Some steep gradients. Black run/ Difficult (Advanced / Expert): Able to link together consistent, short, radius turns and vary speed and direction with ease. Gradients consistently steep and may have hazards. Well, my knees held up – and so did my nerve… just! There were 13 in our ski party, all with varying degrees of competence, from an absolute beginner (that would be me, then!) to experts with 30 years’ experience. So I had plenty of support and boy, did I need it! Luckily the evening ‘festivities’ surrounding the stag weekend that we were on took my mind off the serious matter in hand – attempting a ski black run as my fifth, 60th year charity challenge. Having had only a handful of practice sessions on the local dry slope back home, stepping out on to some serious, real snow, albeit ‘just’ the nursery slope, was a sobering wake-up call. On the first day, I managed a few, shakey blue runs and started feeling pretty pleased with myself. Oh the joys of a false sense of security! Day two, and there had been no recent snow fall. Conditions had turned icy and a red run was a definite no-no for me. But next day, after 15 centimetres of snow in the night and conditions having become less hazardous, my confidence had nevertheless waned slightly, but hey…. I managed to successfully complete a red run! I’d like to mention Cliff Stephens, veteran skier and step-dad of my future son-in-law, Steve, whose help, encouragement and wise counsel almost certainly saved me from a trip home in a plaster cast or worse. Cliff advised me ‘strongly’ against attempting a black run, and having seen the black run ‘slope,’ which in fact appeared to be a sheer drop, I was more than happy to take his advice. So at the end of the day I had to be satisfied with a red run. A little disappointing for me, but I’m told that’s still an impressive achievement for a novice. Watch the video above!

This is the longest, fastest zip wire in the Northern Hemisphere – and the fastest laxative too, apparently! Situated in Bethesda, North Wales, it’s the Zip World Velocity – headfirst, 100mph, 500 feet off the ground and a mile long. I must be mental. I had a taste of what’s to come recently when I experienced a more modest zip wire at Center Parcs. That was scary enough. Oh well… it’s all in the name of charity.

Gorgeous weather. Beautiful plane. Fantastic (albeit stomach-churning) experience. That pretty much sums up my 4th Challenge – my wing walk flight at Chiltern Park Aerodrome, Oxfordshire on Saturday, 26th September. Of all the Challenges I’ve done so far this year, this one seemed to divide opinion the most. Only a few people said they’d like to do it. The majority couldn’t think of anything worse and found the prospect genuinely terrifying. I have to say I was nervously looking forward to it and the reality only hit me during the pre-flight briefing when I was effectively advised that I could die and was obliged to sign a piece of paper accepting that fact! I was strapped into a fairly basic seating arrangement on top of the wing and with just a few moments to give my ‘signature’ thumbs-up, we were away, engine roaring. (For the technically-minded, the plane was a 1930s Boeing ‘Stearman’ biplane fitted with a Lycoming radial engine, and previously used as a training plane during World War 2.) Not sure how long I was in the air – 10 or 15 minutes maybe – but as a heart-pounding, spine-jarring, mind-numbing adrenalin rush it exceeded my expectations. It was cold, noisy, fast, and yes, pretty scary! The most frightening episode (what I’d call a ‘touching cloth’ moment!) was the steep dive and swoop when I thought we were going to plow into the ground. Safely back on terra firma, before I had time to recover, I apparently bravely commented that ‘it was great, I enjoyed it and would do it again.’ On reflection, yes, that’s probably true.