Flight and fright on Sheeran’s NZ adventure
Pop star Ed Sheeran had an adventurous time in New Zealand during his ‘‘proper gap year’’, wingwalking on one of Sir Peter Jackson’s World War I planes and bungy jumping in Queenstown.
Sheeran released two new singles on Friday and spoke of his Kiwi travels on BBC Radio One this week.
He described his adventures on one of Jackson’s Great War biplanes, which are displayed at the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre near Blenheim.
‘‘Peter Jackson, the guy that does the Lord of the Rings films, he collects World War I planes,’’ said Sheeran.
‘‘And he strapped me to the front of one of them standing up and then flew me around. He has got a load of them. He has got a museum that has them all in. That was in May or June.’’
He also experienced a classic Kiwi bungy jump with Jackson’s daughter Katie, despite his fear of heights.
‘‘I was in Queenstown and they said: ‘Shall we go on a bungy jump?’ and I thought ‘I guess when in Rome’, but I’m terrified of heights.
‘‘I thought, ‘yeah, I’m gonna do it to see if it cures my fear of heights’ and for the next month I had dreams of just falling.
‘‘I did it and it was horrible. The guys that do it are like 17 or 18 and they mess with you a little bit. They grab you and pretend to push you over. That is the scariest thing I did.’’
He also went white-water rafting in Fiji and burnt his foot ‘‘in a boiling geyser in Iceland’’.
Sheeran’s hit song I See Fire featured in Jackson’s 2013 film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
Jackson reportedly gave Sheeran a prop sword from the film after its release.
‘‘[Sir Peter Jackson] took us out for dinner, gave me a sword, which was cool,’’ said Sheeran at the time.
‘‘It’s a real sword, it was one of the props [from The Hobbit] . . . I gave him a guitar. Well, I gave his daughter [Katie] a guitar.’’