Travelling Tim's taste for adventure

"We were travelling towards the Gran Pantonal wetlands in Brazil in an old pick-up truck. It was a bone-shaking journey that took 36 hours.

"When we arrived, our guide told us they'd ran out of food.

"We'd brought none with us, so for a week, we lived off the piranha we caught in the wetlands and tried to avoid some rather uncomfortably close neighbours – an anaconda, and several alligators."

It's easy to see that Oswestry twitterer Tim Robbins, who tweets from @hoverdays, has a taste for adventure.

After leaving university, he spent most of his adult years exploring Mexico, Paraguay, Uraguay, Thailand, Indonesia, Malasia and Tasmania before travelling to Brazil and Slovakia to teach English as a foreign language.

When Tim finally returned to the UK, he settled into a new role teaching business English to European and Scandanavian professionals at a specialist language school, and it was then that he hit upon an idea that would see him set up one of the county's most popular activity centres.

"I went and had a go on a hovercraft one day," says Tim. "I loved the experience, but I didn't think much of the place itself and thought someone else could do it much better. So I did!"

Tim bought two hovercrafts and set up Hoverdays Activity Centre in a large field at Rednall, near West Felton, on the outskirts of Oswestry.

That was five years ago, and Hoverdays has since expanded to offer archery, quad biking, 4x4s, blindfold driving and reverse driving.

"If you haven't tried hovercrafting yet, do!" says Tim. "You can race over our track and go from land to water and back again. It's a tremendous thrill."

The variety of activities means that Tim's centre attracts all age ranges.

"My oldest customer is 84!" says Tim. "But we're also increasingly popular with stag and hen parties who, perhaps because of the recession, have chosen not to travel abroad, and explore all that Shropshire has to offer instead.

"You can have a great weekend in Shropshire and you'll never be short of things to do."

The hovercrafts have also come in handy when rivers in Shropshire and Gloucestershire burst their banks.

"They're much sturdier than rib boats and because they're capable of travelling over both land and water, they can be extremely useful during the floods.

"We can go out to flooded farmland and rescue lambs or even go into more built up areas and ferry people across the water."

Tim set up his Twitter page to spread the word about Hoverdays' activities, offer tips on hovercraft racing and share links to the videos he makes of the centre's facilities.

Follow him at www.twitter.com/hoverdays

By Lara Page