Canyoning is a great adventure sport

If you fancy trying something a bit different this year and you're a fan of adventure sports, canyoning could well be a good option.

It's kind of a combination between a water and rock activity and it's one of the most high-adrenaline sports going.

Popular in both the UK and the US – where it's known as canyoneering, the sport takes place in the water, as well as on land. The term can encompass everything from gorge walks or scrambles to river running – it's a fairly wide-ranging name to use for the adventure sport.

Canyoning is always a guide-led activity in the UK, with participants taken down the side of a steep-sided gorge in various different ways. To stay dry, people will definitely need to have mens waterproof jackets and waterproof trousers to hand, as they'll be sliding and swimming down rapids, among other things.

It's a really fast-moving sport, with you having to tackle some difficult chutes and waves and even jump down some waterfalls in some cases!

Definitely not for the faint-hearted, canyoning definitely requires participants to have a high level of health in order to take part. You'll be doing a fair amount of strenuous activity, so you need to be able to trek and ideally swim, although people are given buoyancy aids so non-swimmers are allowed to participate.

A session will usually last around three to five hours, so you'll need to make sure you keep your energy levels up throughout the day. It's deemed to be a full-day activity, due to its intense physical demands, so you should only really plan to do it on the same weekend as other events if you've got enough free time.

You're bound to have plenty of fun on a canyoning trip if you love adventure sports, so what are you waiting for? Get planning now!