The world's biggest aerobatic event, the Red Bull World Series Air Race, paid a visit to Longleat at the weekend. To get a feel for this most dramatic of sports, Western Daily Press reporter Ed Witcomb hitched a spectacular ride with one of the daredevil pilots...

For a moment, swooping high above the Wiltshire countryside, I thought my head and stomach were trying to swap places.

The Extra 300 aeroplane, in the amazingly steady hands of Zimbabwean pilot Nigel Lamb, was heading vertically into the blue sky, and the G-forces were soaring. But this, I hear Nigel explaining through my headset, is only "gentle".

This did not bode well. It seemed impossible, but my baptism of fire into the world of aerobatics was about to get a whole lot hotter.

"We are just going to try a roll, so just look straight ahead," says Nigel. I nod. What happened next was nothing short of a miracle.

The plane is capable of a 360-degrees roll in less than a second, so before I could say 'I'm a reporter, get me out of here' we had spun all the way around and were back where we started.

For the extraordinary pilots of the Red Bull World Series Air Race, this mid-air rollercoaster ride is all in a day's work.

It is hard to explain how different the aerobatic experience is, but British competitor Paul Bonhomme gives it a go. "Comparing this with a Boeing 747 is like comparing a Formula One car to a double-decker bus," he said.

"The most exciting thing is the three-dimensional freedom – you can go wherever you want in any direction."

Well, for a rookie like me, there is a fine line between excitement and fear. In fact, the whole experience was surreal.

During the occasional serene moments, the rhinos and giraffes of Longleat could be seen moving about a few hundred yards below.

But the contrast between the steady splendour of Lord Bath's estate and the heady mayhem of this flight could not have been more striking.

Nigel Lamb's day job is movie stunt pilot. His manoeuvres can be seen in the Bruce Willis film Hart's War. And when he starts a loop, I feel like we're making a sequel to Top Gun. It is an entirely new way of moving and seeing the world.

Next up, and by far the most dramatic, is the flick roll. Being inside the plane, it is impossible to say exactly what Nigel did, but I'm pretty sure it defied all the laws of physics.

The earlier moves turned me into a grinning six-year-old. After the flick roll I had regressed still further into a gurgling baby.

Nigel calls back: "Did you enjoy that?" I nod my head, raise a thumb and let out a primeval grunt to express to him that it was the craziest feeling I had ever had.

The planes are so responsive and the pilot so accurate it seems nothing is impossible. Nigel flicks the plane 90 degrees here, 90 degrees there and the G-forces are unlike anything I've experienced.

But I never found myself wishing I'd told my parents how much I loved them – while Nigel was clearly relaxed and in control.

"The whole plane is designed for its handling," he said, after touching down smoothly on the grass runway in a field just outside Longleat.

Stepping from the plane, the real world was weirdly still – it took several minutes to get used to the pedestrian speed of things.

The planes are impressive, but the pilots are beyond belief.