Like many sites, they are experienced in aiding physically disabled take the plunge - sometimes wheelchair and all.Cost: Rainforest, A$95 (45m jump and transport plus T-shirt); Kuranda $100 (jump, T-shirt and video).France: Vertige Aventures, Ponsonnas and Le Sautet, near Grenoble. For the ultimate day out, the Awesome Foursome incorporates a bungee jump, jet-boat river ride, helicopter ride and white- water rafting.Cost: Kawarau, NZ$99 (43m jump, plus T-shirt); Skippers, $110 (71m jump and transport, plus T-shirt); Pipeline, $130 (102m jump and transport, plus T-shirt). Awesome Foursome, $299 (transport included).Australia: AJ Hackett Bungy, Cairns (two sites - Cairns Rainforest; Kuranda Market). Tel: 00 61 7031 1119The Rainforest site is reputedly the busiest in the world.

Jumpers climb 247 steps to the top of a purpose-built tower modelled on the bottom section of the Eiffel Tower (above), then dive off the 45m platform towards a creek below that winds through the forest floor. The Rainforest averages 100 jumps a day, with 125,000 having taken the plunge in six years - 100 per cent safety record at Australia's only safety standards-approved site. Some of the favoured boredom-breakers include leaping buck-naked, dressed in leather (complete with whips), and attached to skis or snowboards (above). Home of European qualifying for Extreme Games in 1995 and 1996. UK Bungee Club offers jumping Sat-Sun, 10am-6pm; and Thu-Fri, 1pm-6pm during summer Also organises mobile jumps and night jumps for groups. Motto: "You can't beat a BJ."Cost: Club membership pounds 15; first jump pounds 35; second jump on the day pounds 25. Free for those jumping for charity who raise a given minimum sum.New Zealand: Queenstown - AJ Hackett Bungy (Kawarau) and AJ Hackett Bungy (Skippers) Tel: 00 64 3442 7122; Pipeline (Skippers) Tel: 00 64 3442 5455Playground of bungee dreams, with plenty of options if you get bored with plain old leaping.

Jump platform is suspended from a crane 325ft above the Thames - twice the height of most mobile platforms. The spins and somersaults of these performers are worlds away from the modest swallow dive of the first-time jumper but, for the rest of your life, recalling the memory of that initial leap is guaranteed to give you an adrenalin-driven frisson.Six elastic sport sites around the world where jumpers can leap new frontiersUK Bungee Club, Adrenalin Village, Battersea Wharf, Queenstown Road, London SW8 4NPTelephone 0171-720 9496The only permanent bungee jumping site in the United Kingdom, opened in February 1995. For the last two years the sport has featured in the Extreme Games held in New York State; and in November the top 30 jumpers will be going on a world tour organised by Triple C Sports Management, with planned stops at jump sites at Cairns, in Australia, Las Vegas, Victoria Falls, and at the Viaduc Soulevre, in Normandy.The European Extreme Bungee qualifier for this year's Extreme Games was held at Adrenalin Village. The UK Bungee Club follows the code of conduct - including the requirement that jumpers are attached to the rope by both the ankles and the waist - of the British Elastic Rope Sports Association, a group set up in 1989 by the Health and Safety Executive.When I visited Adrenalin Village, there was a party of 20 from the South Coast doing sponsored jumps for charity; a medical student back for a repeat visit who chose the catapult option, in which you are pulled out over the river by the bungee rope; a youth who jumped wearing strait- jacket and hood; a girl who thought better of following her boyfriend's jump and was swamped by wailing, hugging supporters when she was winched down; and a visitor from Italy, Raimondo Irace, who used his experience of cliff diving on the Amalfi coast to launch himself in a poised manner from the platform and to keep balance in flight on that dramatic first bounce.Bungee acrobatics is now a competitive sport and most of its leading practitioners were formerly high divers or gymnasts.

It is a fast and exhilarating sport and people cannot jump if they are under 14, have high blood pressure, a heart condition or a damaged back. But the medical report concluded that the patient could have suffered similar symptoms from sneezing or from jumping the last steps of a flight of stairs. In one recent case that received much publicity, a young girl was found to have suffered temporary tunnel vision after making a bungee jump. In the split-second before gravity takes effect, it feels as if you are hanging, suspended by a thread.As the fall begins, a great rushing of air can be heard, and the whoops of encouragement from people waiting on the ground.