MANY pensioners enjoy working on their allotments or similar hobbies in retirement - but 73-year-old Bill Rule is an exception.

The veteran skydiver, who lives in Wheldrake, celebrated 50 years of skydiving by jumping 3,500 feet from an aircraft at Skydive GB, Grindale, near Bridlington, and landed three centimetres from the centre of a target marked by a two-centimetre yellow dot!

Bill is currently in training for the British Skydiving National Championships in classic accuracy, which will be hosted by Skydive GB in September.

“I’ve always got a buzz from skydiving and I’m getting ready for the GB Championships,” said Bill, who has been keeping himself in shape during the Covid lockdown.

“If I can get into the top-five, I will qualify to represent GB in the the World Championships in Russia.”

Bill started jumping when he was stationed in the Army with Allied Forces Central Europe in Brunssum, Holland, back in 1971. He has taken part in many parachute displays in York and throughout the UK, as well as Germany and West Berlin before the wall came down.

After 26 years in the Army, he worked for the NHS in York for six years before moving west to work as a general manager for a gas maintenance company.

Bill’s most memorable jumps were with the world-famous parachute display team, The Red Devils, when he did a night jump into West Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, landing at half-time of a football match between West Germany and Argentina.

In 1982, at the end of the Falklands War, he jumped from a helicopter to land on the deck of Townsend Thoresen’s Baltic Ferry.

Anybody interested in trying skydiving will be more than welcome at Skydive GB’s Grindale base, whether it be in learning how to skydive or do a tandem jump attached to an instructor, the latter an exciting way to jump for a charity.

To watch Bill’s 50th anniversary dive, go to https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VrxFtswRMMo_ieYxaVKz-UJwp_PN92qK/view