Dilys Price: Skydiver

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Dilys Price is a remarkable woman and the holder of a number of world records, her speciality being solo skydiving at an advanced age. She began this hobby at the age of 65 and is still doing so – at the time of writing she is 86 and shows no sign of giving up. She was born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1932 and followed a career as a dance teacher. She had the idea of practicing dancing in the air and joined a skydiving school so that she could adopt ballet positions as she hurtled down from an aeroplane. When she was a mere youth of 69 she decided to try jumping from a balloon rather than an aeroplane. She did so from 5000 feet above the Arizona desert, which meant jumping into what is known as “dead air” – no wind but plenty of unpredictable thermals in the unusually thin air of that region. The net result is that one plunges earthwards like a stone. After plenty of instruction from experts, Dilys made her first jump, which was a perfect success apart from landing on a cactus. Dilys enjoyed the experience so much – apart from the last bit – that she just had to do it again. This time she landed in the exercise yard of Arizona’s state prison. Dilys Price – who has been awarded the OBE for her charitable and practical work on behalf of disabled people – has to count as one of the UK’s most notable eccentrics.