Five Jumps for Charity – Julia’s Jumps

Intermission!

We interrupt the exciting ongoing series of ‘Ladies in Lanzarote’ to bring you this new exclusive…

(rest assured, your ‘favourite’ blog series will return new week!)

Extraordinary Women

I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by some extraordinary women; friends and sisters, who themselves are fighting their own battles daily.

Whether it be looking after and worrying about family, contending with work, struggling with ill health, or supporting and caring for sick partners and loved ones.

…and yet they still make time to reach out a helping hand to others when it is needed.

One such friend stood out this Easter with her monumental effort for charity, my wonderful friend and fellow BA Life co-founder, Julia Newell

…who completed her challenge to jump out of a plane not once, or even twice

…but five times in a single day for Mental Health UK!

The Rationale

The rationale or should that be not-so-rational-rationale …to quote a mutual friend of ours “Who in their right mind jumps out of a perfectly good plane!?”

The short story is Julia wanted to do something epic (and this IS epic) to support Mental Health UK, because her husband has recently suffered from mental health issues.  

So, on the basis of one previous tandem jump in the sunshine in Australia, she decided it would be a great idea to do FIVE in ONE day in not-so-sunny Scotland. Her employer Lloyds Banking Group set up the jumps and BA Life became a key sponsor. For the full story see: https://balife.co.uk/charity

False Start

Now as you can imagine, Scottish weather is a bit different from Australian weather and things didn’t go quite according to plan…

• Attempt 1 – Last year Julia and ‘support crew’ (her husband, me and my husband) went to the Strathallan Airfield at Auchterarder full of anticipation. She had the safety briefing and waited …and waited …only to be sent home. No jumping, too much cloud cover.
• Attempt 2 – Earlier this year, Julia got to the airfield. Only to be sent home before we arrived, this time the wind was too high and too much cloud cover.
• Attempt 3 – A little later into the year, Julia didn’t even get to the airfield. She received a text message about heavy rain at Auchterarder.

What did we expect? …it is Scotland after all and the weather is unpredictable.

So, the date was re-booked for Easter Sunday.

• Attempt 4 – We fully anticipated another postponement for bad weather …it was a bank holiday weekend, and as is traditional, they are usually wet. But alas no, all the weather signals were good, and Julia was given the green light to jump!

The Jumps

Each jump had a slightly different look, so everyone knew for certain that she did indeed do five. Each had a different colour theme, marked by a different T-shirt and different lipstick (if you know Julia then you know every occasion needs lippie!)

• Jump 1 – Pink: T-shirt with a picture of Jason (husband) & pink lipstick
• Jump 2 – Orange: T-shirt with a picture of her two boys & orange lipstick
• Jump 3 – Green: T-shirt with Lloyds Banking Group logo & green lipstick
• Jump 4 – Blue: T-shirt with Mental Health UK logo & blue lipstick
• Jump 5 – Black: T-shirt with BA Life logo & black lipstick

As we learnt from Julia, the plane taking the skydivers high and higher was tiny, cramped, and very noisy.

On each jump, it had to circle many times around the field, climbing higher and higher until it reached eight to ten thousand feet. Then the engine noise changed, and when the plane went quiet, we knew the skydivers were about to appear as small black dots high up in the sky.

We’d only just arrived when Julia jumped the first time, and I must admit to being a little tearful at the enormity of everything as we saw her bright red shoot open that first jump.

Every time the plane went up and we saw little black dots appear out of the back of the plane, and then the shoots opened, it truly was a wonderful sight to see. There would be 3 or 4 jumpers looking like they were stacked on top of each other and invariably Julia was at the top of the stack, with a red shoot for the first three jumps.

She seemed to just hang mid-air, suspended for ages, before gradually swinging this way and that around the landing zone.

Bizarrely, when she was still MANY feet above us we could hear her talking to her tandem partner, loud and clear!

On one occasion when her tandem partner was deliberately swinging from side to side we even her heard shouting “Stop! That makes my stomach turn!”

(Good old Julia, never afraid to tell people what she thinks in any situation …even up in the air!)

Each time she floated down towards the ground, there was a chorus of cheering from her and us, her loyal supporters, accompanied by crazy waving …as she hit the ground with an unceremonious bump on her backside.

Then, after a brief photoshoot to mark the jump number, a short rest, a t-shirt and lipstick change, she was off again!

Jump three was the most challenging, it took ages to find a gap in the cloud, and when they had finally jumped Julia had been drifting downwards for several seconds inside the clouds before we caught sight of her. When she landed, she was buzzing, shouting “I walked on a cloud, I walked on a cloud!”

And then all too soon she was descending on her last jump, admitting later to being tearful as she jumped.

She had a hero’s welcome, as the gathered small but loud group of onlookers cheered and celebrated Julia’s wonderful achievement. Julia, you are EPIC! 😊

Afterwards

While we cleared our stuff away, Julia went to say a final cheerio to the skydiving team at Strathallan.

She came back all excited with her certificate, signed by all three tandem divers, who had told her that for the first time that they can remember a rookie, Julia, had jumped more than them in a single day!

After big hugs, we parted company in the car park and headed home. We were exhausted just watching, so who knows how Julia felt!

We learnt later that Julia had celebrated by enjoying a soak in the bath with a G’n’T …so sensible!😉

Julia, you are utterly amazing, thanks for sharing this fantastic day with us.

What can you do?

You don’t have to jump out of a plane to be amazing… Julia has done this for you! She did it for a brilliant cause, Mental Health UK.

And now you could show your support by giving whatever you can to further boost Julia’s charity giving effort. I’m sure you’ll agree, a few pounds are nothing in comparison to the many months of fitness training, three failed previous attempts, and then the five leaps of faith from a plane by Julia.

With mental health becoming the fastest-growing illness impacting people today, you never know when you may need their help.

So go on, head over to Julia’s Just Giving page now!
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Julia-Newell85