Ben Dry sets new UK paragliding record

Ben Dry has set a new paragliding straight distance XC record for the UK, flying 334.9km from Llangorse, Wales to the East Suffolk coastline on Saturday 1 August.

The flight adds 5.6km to the previous record of 329.3km set by Mark Watts last year. That was set on a day where several pilots, including Ben, flew over 300km.

The flight also beats hang glider pilot Carl Wallbank’s long-standing UK hang gliding record of 330.2km set in 2015.

“It was a magical day,” Ben said. “It was very nice to realise that I was going to break the record and was quite a sense of achievement. And then just getting a couple of extra kilometres beyond to do it properly felt good too.

“It was very satisfying, very lovely gliding down through the sea breeze air. It was starting to feel like sunset was approaching and it was unusually peaceful. It’s unusual to land at 8.10pm in the evening, the wing damp from the moisture in the air!”

The flight was a repeat of the record line flown last year, traversing the country west to east from Llangorse across the Midlands to East Suffolk. Flying a Niviuk Peak 6, Ben launched at 10.21am and was in the air for 9h 50m.

He said one of the biggest challenges was keeping out of the 6,500ft (2,000m) airspace midway through the flight. “It was even difficult keeping out of the 7,500ft airspace after that.” His altitude topped 7,900ft at one point.

The day began strong. “It was really rough early in the day. I had a low climb out at about 11am above a farm in Wales and wow, that was pretty hair raising,” he recalled.

“You’d just be on a glide and you’d get this wallop on the side of the wing as if someone with a cricket bat had just whacked it. But by the evening it was quite relaxing to have gentler lift and big clouds. It was a more mellow flying experience.”

Ben is a 41-year-old pilot originally from South Africa, now based near Stroud who’s been flying about ten years, mostly in the UK.

A professional classical cellist he said there wasn’t an obvious corollary between flying and music but that anything that focused the mind was a benefit to concentration.

“I couldn’t say yes, this is exactly what I’ve learned with the cello that now helps my flying. But I think a big thing with flying is to not have a lapse in concentration or get overcome by some sort of feeling of needing to push on or some extreme. But to remain in tune with the environment. That’s important.”

He explained: “Sometimes if I’m getting low, for example, I can find myself almost panicking a bit. [I tell myself] hang on, just observe, see what you can see. If you set your mind to focusing your eyes on seeing something, you put yourself in a much better state to remedy the situation than getting caught up in your own feeling of desperation.

“That [desperation] can blind you to the surroundings. If you put that aside and just try and notice something – a bird doing something, for example – that’s a helpful exercise for staying focused.”

He added that getting home after his flight was out of the question that night. He teamed up with another pilot who’d flown from the Malverns and the pair stayed locally and went to the beach the following day.

The flight registered as 338.23km on XContest, which measures distance via turnpoints. The UK XC League recorded the flight as 334.9km as furthest distance straight line in the air, or 339.3km via three turnpoints. The slight difference in numbers is because of the different ways the two separate contests measure distance.

Ben’s flight topped the international XContest league for the day. Richard Butterworth also broke the 300km mark from the same site on the day. Meanwhile, at least 21 paraglider pilots flew 200km with dozens flying 100k flights in the UK on what was a very special weekend for soaring pilots.

In gliding, several pilots flew 750km circuits in the south of England. Sailplane pilot George White broke the 1,000km mark with a 1,018km flight from Lasham airfield, south of London. Launching at 8.24am he landed back at his airfield more than nine hours later after touring much of southern England.

Flight details

Benjamin Dry
1 August 2026
Llangorse to 6km from Norfolk coast
Straight distance: 334.9km
Free distance using up to three turn points: 339.3km
Explore Ben Dry’s tracklog