The adventurers who turn ordinary life into a white-knuckle ride

But when Sir Richard Branson says he's planning to do something, people tend to sit up and take notice. However, even the intrepid adventurer has to admit defeat sometimes, as was the case yesterday when strong winds and choppy seas forced him to abandon his record-breaking attempt to kite-board across the English Channel. The Virgin entrepreneur had hoped to celebrate his 60th birthday by becoming the oldest person to cross the Channel by kite-board and make the fastest crossing by a kite-board team.

The billionaire businessman and adventurer has been a household name ever since he set out from New York to beat the record for crossing the Atlantic by boat in 1985. On that occasion he failed just a hundred miles from home when his boat hit some floating driftwood and sank, and he and his crew had to be plucked from the sea. A year later, though, the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was congratulating him on the

fastest-ever Atlantic crossing, in a new boat.

Sir Richard's aborted white-knuckle ride is just the latest in a long line of wacky efforts to cross the Channel. In May, trained pilot Jonathan Trappe made the journey strapped to a wicker chair carried by a cloud of colourful helium balloons. Equipped with radio

communication, satellite navigation, oxygen masks and an emergency beacon he took more than four hours to arrive and landed in a cabbage patch.

In 2008, "Birdman" Yves Rossy blasted into the record books on a cross-Channel flight with a jet-propelled wing on his back. The aviator, who flew at speeds reaching 125mph after jumping from a plane 8,200ft above France, parachuted into an English field 13 minutes after take-off.

There are those who view such antics as reckless and even downright dangerous, but there is little doubt that thrill seeking has become a booming pastime in recent years. Some people look at a mountain and stand in awe at its sheer beauty, while others feel compelled to hang-glide off it.

Adrenaline junkies have gone from bungee jumping and free-running (vaulting from building to building) to seek out more extreme experiences like base-jumping, (parachuting off a building or fixed point) and what is known as zorbing (rolling down slopes strapped inside a sphere). There are even those foolhardy enough to be dropped from helicopters so they can tackle the most challenging ski slopes. For some people, this desire to push back the boundaries of human endeavour is part of what makes life special. But it can lead to tragedy, as was the case when adventurer Steve Fossett died after his plane crashed into a mountain over Nevada in 2007, while searching for a suitable location to try to break the current landspeed record.

So what makes us want to confront danger? Is it simply a reaction against a mollycoddling society and the health and safety police? Dave Smith is managing director of Spice UK – the country's first multi-activity, adventure and social group. He believes there are several reasons. "Life has become very safe and we have all these regulations telling you to wear a seatbelt and put a helmet on. So anything that allows you to break out of this is seen as attractive," he says.

"I think people increasingly want to extend themselves and many of these activities have become mainstream. Twenty years ago, you would have struggled to find many sky-diving centres but now you can find them by going online.

"You can go swimming with sharks at sea life centres these days and extreme activities have become a lot more commercial which has created a wider audience."

He himself has been ice- climbing and totted up over 1,000 sky-diving jumps. "There is a heightened sense of being alive when you are in a risk situation, like parachuting, which can be quite addictive," he explains. "Plus it sets you apart, so when you go into work on Monday morning and someone asks what you got up to at the weekend, you can say you've been fire eating, rather than just washing your car."