INSPIRED by Harry Potter, a Darwen minister took to the sky to obtain his paragliding licence... and bring him closer to God.

The Rev Tamas Sugar, of Darwen's United Reformed Church, just loves to don his harnessed parachute and leap off hills into the sky.

Mr Sugar, of Sandy Lane in Darwen, took a liking to the dangerous sport after watching Harry Potter travel in a flying car in The Chamber Of Secrets.

He said: "I saw the film last year and I decided that paragliding was the only way I would ever get to fly. It just looked so exciting and I really wanted to give it a go."

Mr Sugar, 31, says the sport has given him the chance to climb above earthly problems. After training at a paragliding club in Halifax for a year, he received his licence in April. He passed a theory test for the sport last summer.

He said: "When you take part in paragliding, you concentrate on paragliding alone and you can't think about anything else. So for an hour or so, everything else is left behind and it's just you, the parachute and the sky."

The Hungarian minister came to Darwen four years ago after serving as a minister in his home country for four years.

Paragliding is officially classified as a dangerous sport. Mr Sugar's friends and family feared for his safety on first hearing he had adopted the hobby. But his two children Gergo, eight, and Eszter, four, watched their dad and were happy with what they saw.

He said: "Everyone was worried because they saw it as being dangerous but because I enjoyed it so much, they were excited after a while. The first time I went it felt very strange, quite like being on a big swing. I brought my children to watch me and they were so excited. At first I was a bit frightened and I thought, 'How am I going to get down?' But the wind brings you down and once you land you look up and think 'Wow, I was up there'."

He visits Halifax, Chipping and Whitworth for his flights and aims to take off on days off from his ministerial duties and when the weather allows.

Mr Sugar said: "You need to have the right weather with a certain amount of wind and of course the time."

He is now planning on buying a £5,500 motor so he can take to the sky in a variety of weather. Meanwhile the flying reverend will continue to roam the skies without the aid of a motor.

He said: "With the license I can now go out unsupervised which I'm very excited about."

Oliver Whitehouse, paragliding instructor at Hey End Farm, Halifax, said: "You don't get the type of people you would expect coming to take part in the sport. And it's very very rare to have ministers. We have Tamas and another vicar learning to paraglide at the moment but they are the only two I've heard of from clubs across the country. You'd expect people in their 20s but in actual fact most are between 30 and 40.

"We have one 79-year-old man who absolutely loves it."