Going Again, Moving On: Winter 2025

If you wish to remain in Europe for the Winter and still go skydiving in reasonable temperatures, one is limited to heading quite far South. While a Christmas boogie somewhere North of the mountains that separates the Mediterranean countries from the rest of the continent is not unheard of, it is really only for the brave. There are choices for how to escape over the holidays, offering some flexibility for the size and shape of skydiving you want to pursue. For CYPRES, touring sensibly between events of suitable scale and location means we have settled into visiting Spain. Italy is too far to join the dots with practicality, anything further East is too small and unreliable, and heading out into the wider world means reshaping the format of Road + Van = Tour.

The core Spanish gatherings over the holidays are both large enough and sufficiently international to make it worthwhile to invest in our repeated attendance and support. Your home dropzone might have a yearly boogie, or perhaps a coaching team that passes by once in the Summer, or maybe you head off to attend something overseas one year after the next. Being on tour for a manufacturer generally means visiting many operations once each year for their busiest week, and only that week. With departure looming, it got me thinking about the annual cycle of skydiving, and what either repeating a trip or shaking things up can offer…

Time Loops:

Skydiving is growing and changing all the time, but this doesn’t happen evenly throughout the sport. For every dropzone that evolves with each turn of the seasons, there is an opposite that remains in stasis year after year, seemingly forever. Good and bad experiences are not attached to either situation; it just depends on what you want from your skydiving. If your trip is an identical repeat of last time, is that good or bad?

Efficiency:

If you only have a short time away and want to jump as much as possible, having reconnoitred the situation previously can be reassuring and advantageous. Knowing that your transport and accommodation links are acceptable, and where to find a decent supermarket and a good cup of coffee, means getting to the manifest window sooner and sharper. Good skydiving is an exercise in the application of mental bandwidth, which is true not only of the jump process but the situational periphery.

Adventure:

Alternatively, maybe by the time your away days approach, you are raring to go with whatever the universe throws at you. A new location with a lot of unknown variables can provide the kind of tingly experiences that make normies very envious of how exciting you are, particularly when you throw in some saucy jumps onto beaches and such. The risk element is that while everything can go smoothly, it might also be a logistical battle with shite arrangements that leave you ragged, which can easily enough bleed over into your jumps.

Promises:

It is wise to be wary of scale. Altering the details of an event to stay fresh is a good thing, but if the thing that is altered has anything to do with ‘going big’ the ride will not be the same. It may be good, but in my experience, the best repeat performances are understood, optimised, embellished, and only then expanded.

Every now and then, a boogie contains the kind of magic that people talk about for years to come. You won’t know it at the time, but later you will be someone who was there when it went off. Gatherings of all shapes and sizes can be special; it just means being there in the situation that is best for you.

Here is where you can find CYPRES over the Winter months:

4th-7th December: Skydive Madrid, Spain

20th-26th December: Skydive Empuriabrava Christmas Boogie, Spain

23rd-31st December: Skydive Spain Xmas Boogie, Spain Innit

27th-1st January: Skytime Castellon Christmas Boogie, Spain

9th-11th January: Skydive Tarodaunt, Morocco

17th-25th January: PACMA Beni Mellal, Morocco

30th-31st January: Skydive the Expo, UK

25th-27th February: European Skydiving Symposium Seville, Spain