Feeling bold? Want to push your boundaries? Brace yourself for our pick of high-adrenaline experiences and daredevil activities in the capital.
Skydiving in London
iFly Indoor Skydiving at The O2 offers you a chance to experience the adrenaline of skydiving, without the need for a plane. It takes the form of a vertical wind tunnel, which lifts you clean off the ground.
After a few seconds of acclimatising, it's not all that scary — an instructor helps you to assume the correct position on your first go, and you're only about 5ft off the ground, so if the worst were to happen, you'd land very softly on some netting. We found ourselves more concerned with trying not to dribble as the intense wind pummelled our lips out of shape.
Various packages are available with flights of different lengths. Once you've mastered the basics, your instructor offers you the opportunity to fly up to the top of the wind tunnel, which is where things get more exciting, though for us, it was more a feat of endurance to maintain the correct flying posture.
Indoor skydiving is often accessible to people with physical disabilities, for whom regular skydiving wouldn't be possible. If this is you, get in touch with iFly to discuss your needs.
As far as we know, there are no 'real' skydiving venues in London. Don't be fooled by 'North London Skydiving', which is located north of Cambridge, or 'Skydiving London', which is actually near Swindon.
Walk across the roof of Alexandra Palace
As of February 2026, the apex central roof of Alexandra Palace is open for anyone who fancies taking a stroll over it, thanks to Summit: Ally Pally Rooftop Adventure. Led by a member of the Wire & Sky team, you climb an internal staircase up to the balcony in front of Ally Pally's Rose Window, where you're kitted out with a harness while you get a preview of the view you'll be enjoying from up top. You then head further up inside the building before climbing out onto a flat part of the roof.
Here, you're securely clipped onto the structure of the building before beginning your ascent up a metal staircase placed over the glass roof. As long as you're generally fine with heights and able to climb stairs, the experience is neither too strenuous nor too scary. You're never too close to an edge, nor looking directly down. Focus on the views, initially looking south towards central London, with a sea of skyscrapers (and St Paul's) on the horizon.
As you reach the eponymous summit, in the shadow of the Angel of Plenty statue, take in 360° views of London and beyond. On a clear day you can see for over 25 miles, covering four counties and 28 London boroughs. This is the most nerve-wracking part of the adventure: we climbed on a windy day and could feel a slight wobble in the platform beneath our feet (though remember, you're safely clipped onto the structure at all times). Once you've had your fill of views, you descend the other side of the roof, getting a good look at the former BBC transmission mast atop the Alexandra Palace building as you go.
Climb the rig of the Cutty Sark
Wire & Sky, the aerial adventure company behind the Ally Pally roof climb, also has a base in Greenwich — specifically, helping people scale the rig of the Cutty Sark. This one is both more physically demanding and a bit more knee-trembling than Alexandra Palace (though it's open to anyone aged eight and up). Definitely not ideal for anyone who's less than comfortable with heights.
Begin on the Main Deck, and climb the ratlines (rope ladders) up onto the rigging, from where you can make your way onto a small platform, and enjoy the views. The climb is challenging on both the arms and legs, and of course, you can see right through the ropes to the deck below you, and beyond that to the street surrounding the Cutty Sark.
Once you reach the platform, take some time to enjoy the views. We were staggered by how impressive the panorama is. Historic Greenwich surrounds you. Canary Wharf's skyscrapers loom across the river. Further afield, all the main components of the central London skyline are visible. Southward, the Crystal Palace mast peeps over the hills.
For one final challenge, make your way out onto the Lower Topsail Yard (or, to us landlubbers, one of the wooden 'arms' jutting out from each side of the central mast). Once you're done, it's a simple controlled descent (abseil) back down to the Main Deck.
The experience tends to run April-October each year, taking a break through the winter months.
The Dare Skywalk, Tottenham
Spurs really upped the ante when they opened their new stadium in 2019. Aside from the usual behind the scenes tours, it also offers a chance to view the pitch from a glass walkway 46.8m in the air — once again, led by the ballsy Wire & Sky team.
The Dare Skywalk takes you up onto the roof of the largest club stadium in London, then out onto the glass walkway in front of the famous golden cockerel statue. The experiences last 90 minutes, from briefing at basecamp, to climbing 100 steps and ascending the open-sided walkway along the side of the stadium (you're clipped on, don't fret!). Wheelchair accessible versions of the experience are available, and the platform offers 360° views over London and beyond, with landmarks including the Shard easy to pick out.
As for returning back down to the ground, you can take the route you came. Or...
Abseiling in London
For a city with so many high buildings, London is surprisingly limited when it comes to regular abseiling options, other than climbing walls and centres.
What you can do, is sign up for a 'controlled descent' back down to the ground after you finish The Dare Skywalk (above). The Edge, as the experience is known, has you clipped onto guide ropes to descend the 42 metres back to solid ground — and you can choose whether you go forwards or backwards.
The ArcelorMittal Orbit in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park has previously offered abseiling experiences (which we tried before it launched), all the way back in 2014. Zip World London now runs the Orbit, focusing on the Helix tunnel slide experience, so at time of writing the abseil is on pause, but we're hopeful it'll return in the future.
Otherwise, look out for one-off charity abseils in London. London's Air Ambulance Charity tends to host at least one abseil each year, usually around September, when gutsy fundraisers abseil 17 floors from the helipad on top of the Royal London Hospital, back down to the ground. Similarly the Guy's & St Thomas' Charity offers occasional 160ft abseils down the St Thomas' building by Westminster Bridge. It's a case of checking on the individual websites to see when the next event is.
Thames Rockets speedboats
Thames Rockets gives you the chance to whizz up and down the Thames on a speedboat at speeds of up to 30 knots (35mph) — which doesn't sound all that nippy, but with the wind in your hair, spray coming at you from the side of the boat, and guides throwing commentary at you left, right and centre, it's an exhilarating/blurry to see the capital.
Everyone's provided with a life jacket, and you shouldn't get too wet, though if the wind's blowing the wrong way, you might get covered in spray. Different experiences are available, including the 50-minute Ultimate London Adventure, which takes you from the London Eye to Canary Wharf and back, or the 80-minute Thames Barrier Voyage which takes you all the way out to... yep, the Thames Barrier, then back to central London.
Walk on the glass floor of Tower Bridge
For anyone scared of heights, few things are likely to get your pulse racing/palms sweating like walking over the glass floors in the high-level walkways of Tower Bridge. They're right in the centre of the bridge, putting you over both the road (33.5 metres down) and the river (42 metres down), and giving you a clear view straight down to both... if you dare open your eyes.
There are two lifts up to the walkways, one in each tower of the bridge, offering step-free access to the glass floors.
Go snorkelling with sharks at Sealife London Aquarium
For a generation raised on Jaws, sharks are the ultimate in giving you the heebie-jeebies, and the Sealife London Aquarium lets you get up close to them, with a snorkelling cage in its shark tank.
For 15 minutes, don a snorkelling mask and bob about in a transparent (but very solid) cage, in a tank which is home to five species of shark including sand tiger sharks, blacktip reef sharks and bowmouth guitarfish. There are no great whites... we triple-checked before we got in.
We dived in when the experience relaunched in 2019, having previously dipped visitors into the tank in a net-like vessel. These days it's a solid cage, which removes a certain frisson from the experience. The cage is kept at the top of the water too, so you're never completely submerged. It's a fascinating and very special encounter to get a close look at these creatures while they're swimming — and ever so cool to be able to drop "that time I swam with sharks" into everyday conversations — but not the heart-stoppingly frightening experience you might expect.
Up at The O2
Up at The O2 involves walking over the top of the O2's famous dome. The ascent begins fairly steep, but soon flattens out, and you're clipped onto a central railing throughout. In the centre is a viewing platform, where you can pause to take in the 360° views.
The solid nature of the walkway means you can't see directly below you — and even if you could, there's only the roof of the O2 to see down there. You'll be too busy looking at the views all around you, anyway. If anything, the descent is scarier than the ascent, as the ground is in front of you (if you're not keen on heights, try to make sure you're not at the front of your group for this bit). For us, the springy nature of the stretched canvas walkway was the most unnerving part.
Climbs are available on selected days for wheelchair users and their family/friends. They involve transferring into a specially designed wheelchair, operated on a pulley system by a team of guides.
White Water Rafting at Lee Valley
Of all the experiences we've tried in London, the one that got our heart pumping the fastest was white water rafting at the Lee Valley White Water Centre. Admittedly, it's a smidge beyond the London border, but it was a London 2012 Olympics venue, so we're claiming it.
Board a raft with up to eight other people and tackle the world-class rapids course. You're given a spot of training into how to paddle and steer, and then made to take a running jump into the (chilly!) water, to allow you to acclimatise to the temperatures before you go overboard later. Then it's out onto the course, and being thrown up, down, left, right, don't drop your paddle, lean left, NOW NOW NOW. Or something like that. Exhilarating, exciting, terrifying... everything a daredevil experience should be. And damn cold to boot.
Try the flying trapeze
Fancy hurling yourself off of something high and seeing what happens? The trapeze is for you.
Gorilla Circus is a flying trapeze school which pops up in a couple of London locations during the summer — it's been swinging by Regent's Park for years, and recently added Kensington Gardens to its repertoire, though keep an eye on the website for this summer's plans. Courses and classes range from one-off sessions for beginners to regular courses for more experienced trapezists. During our two-hour introductory lesson, we started on a lower bar to get the feel of things, but did progress to having a go at the highest bar, which involved throwing ourselves off a platform several metres off the ground, and hoping to feel our fingers clasp around the bar as we plummeted. Yes, we had safety ropes and all that gubbins, but your brain doesn't tend to cling to logic like that when you're working up the courage to jump.
Alternatively, the National Centre for Circus Arts in Hoxton offers Try Fly taster sessions throughout the year, where adults can have a go.
