Charity bid to cross Solent - in a Batman bouncy castle!

But a floating Batman bouncy castle must be one of the strangest.

It was at the centre of a failed charity challenge that ended with the crew of three soldiers having to be rescued as they drifted out to sea on the tide.

The servicemen were attempting to paddle from Hurst Castle in the New Forest to Colwell Bay on the Isle of Wight on the 8ft bouncy castle, aptly named HMS Implausible.

Strong tide They aimed to complete the one mile challenge in just over an hour in aid of forces charity Help for Heroes.

Unfortunately the strong tide swept them towards the Needles and the open sea and they had to be towed back to safety by their support boat.

The craft was kept inflated using two leaf-blowers and had undergone extensive testing in a swimming pool and a canal, but this was its first sea voyage.

It encountered trouble early on when the team decided to put it in the water to tow it to the start point rather than carry it to save time after their support crew was delayed by traffic.

Amid farcical scenes it was hit by a wave which flipped the leaf blowers into the sea, causing them to stop working and the bouncy castle to deflate.

On their second attempt the fundraisers had got about halfway across when the bouncy castle started veering away in the direction of the Needles and the challenge had to be called off.

Despite the failure, Captain Andy Ellis, of Bristol, who is retired from The Rifles, Captain Terry Williams, of Gloucestershire, from the Mercian Regiment, and Major Matt Smith, from London, of the Royal Engineers, may still attempt the challenge in future and said they had learnt a lot from the experience.

Capt Williams said: “Once we knew we’d missed the tide we knew we wouldn’t succeed, but thought we’d see what we could learn from the experience. We learned quite a lot. It took the waves incredibly well.

“We think it is achievable with minor changes, so we’re actually quite buoyed up from what happened.

It was incredibly good fun and we raised some money for charity.”

He said any future attempt would once again be done in consultation with the coastguard and with a safety boat.

He said the group came up with the idea on a flight back from South America, where they had toured through Peru and Paraguay and were looking for a new adventure.

He said: “We initially wanted to cross the Channel, but we thought that would be too much so we decided to go to the Isle of Wight.”