So I?m not good with heights. Escalators, the Eiffel Tower, sitting on Claudia Henkel's shoulders ? fine for some, nauseating for me. The thought of bungee jumping is up there with a two-week holiday in Baghdad for sheer appeal, parachuting is an act of lunacy, and the one occasion peer pressure forced me into abseiling it took me 40 minutes just to go over the edge. All of which makes volunteering to go paragliding quite possibly the stupidest thing I?ve managed to do in 29 years of frequent lapses of judgement.

It?s a lot less threatening on the other end of the phone, the mundane discussion of weather, prices, time, location. Meet at Lion?s Head, attach parachute, harness and instructor, and calmly float down to Camps Bay beach, to a rapturous reception from awed bikinis. Barely worth a second thought ? if not a walk in the park, then a gentle glide above one ? with a bloke called Jan who sounds entirely sensible making sure that everything goes smoothly. Nothing to worry about, really?

?until your fleeting descent from Lion?s Head turns into a swirling voyage over Hermanus, weather conditions forcing a cancellation of the flight into Camps Bay, and a glide around the Overberg instead.

Which entails a drive of just over an hour, more than enough time to let a mild ripple of concern develop into full-blown, pale-as-a-ghost terror ? to the gleeful delight of Jan, who keeps a straight face while telling you he?s only ever done this three times before, and the pure evil that is my girlfriend, for whom the paragliding trip is a Valentine?s present. An extremely ill-thought, what-on-earth-possessed-me-do-to-this Valentine?s present.

And so, on a mild, reasonably bright Saturday morning (should make finding my body relatively easy, I suppose), after an hour of Jan explaining that I?m only his fifth customer, and my spawn of Satan girlfriend running through the paragliding fatalities she claims to have read about, I?m a shivering wreck as I?m tied into my harness.

Swallowing back a bag of jelly babies ? not much of a last meal, but it?s all I can find ? I line up, Hermanus lying beneath me, and prepare to take off. Run at full tilt over the edge of the cliff, and glide off in tandem with the instructor? Cardiac arrest is definitely just moments away.

But then something rather unexpected happens: as I?m psyching myself up for an attempt at the running take-off required ? pallor reduced to somewhere between English tourist and corpse ? Jan takes two steps forward, the ground leaves my feet (much as it used to when watching Steffi Graf play tennis), and suddenly, to my utter disbelief, I?m paragliding. No, really.

Ideally, this is the point where all past fears fall away, and the joy of free flight takes hold instead; in reality, it took the first five minutes to stop clinging desperately to the harness, and relax enough to survey the world unfolding below.

But when it was done, even through a fog of fear, the view was impossible to discount: the sweep of the ocean (in season whale spotting is brilliant from a paraglider, apparently), miniature figures playing weekend cricket, the newly re-designed Hermanus Golf Course, the gentle slope of the vines of Hamilton Russell, all make for an exquisite vista.

Throw in birds at arm?s length surfing a thermal and the quiet that exists once you?re airborne and the appeal is certainly there. Unfortunately, you need to conquer a fear of heights to enjoy, and I?m just not quite there yet.

20 minutes up was my limit, landing only just preventing a colourful display of projectile vomiting and while the view was majestic and Jan an excellent pilot my paragliding career looks to be fleeting at best. Valentine?s Day 2009? A new chess board looks the way to go?

Contact Jan at Parataxi on 0829662047 for flights from Camps Bay and Hermanus. Flights cost R850 per person; sick bags not included?