Having coped with skydiving at 12,000 feet, last weekend I ventured off the ground again to have a go at Go Ape. For the uninitiated amongst you, this involves being up to 12 metres off the ground and completing what can only be described as an aerial assault course. Bizarrely, despite not being anywhere near the heights involved in jumping out of an aeroplane, this was way more scary. There were seven of us in our group in total and the first task was to read the instructions/disclaimer reminding us that we were about to take part in a high risk activity, which could result in serious injury or death if we didn't follow the safety advice we were given. A small part of the course was visible through the trees and we watched other groups being put through their paces whilst we waited.
Once our appointed time slot arrived we went into section 1 - the training zone, where we were kitted up with harnesses and talked through the safety rules. Having been told and shown how to attach ourselves to various tree trunks and cables we then got to practice. Initially this was at ground level and then a few feet off the ground, clipping first the blue D ring onto the cable, then the red D ring and walking around the tree. Then it was hook the pulley over the cable, unhook the blue D ring and put it through the bottom of the pulley and then unhook the red D ring and hook that on to the cable behind the pulley before setting off to move across to the next tree, where the process of unhooking and hooking up again began once more. We also practised attaching ourselves to ropes alongside either wooden or rope ladders, using the same system as before and also by attaching a clip to a green D ring on the belt of the safety harness. Finally we practised on a short zip wire, using the pulley system, which barely gave us time to get down before we hit the ground. Training complete, we were issued with a code to get into each section of the course, five of them in total, and set free to complete the course on our own.
Each section ended with a zip wire. They were awesome! I'd like to say that I finished each one on my feet, but I can't. The truth is you swing around so much that it's difficult to control which way you're facing and I completed all of them on my back on the ground in the bark covered landing zone. Inevitably I ended up a little dirtier than when I started and with some extra cargo in my jeans, with pockets full of bark, which also somehow managed to get into other more intimate places than my pockets! So the zip wires were the best bits, it was just the obstacles that came before them that I found more daunting. Each section started out with a rope ladder climb - that too was fine, however once up off the ground, getting to the coming down part was incredibly challenging and all the way round I kept saying to myself 'I don't think I can do this!' - luckily I was wrong.
There were a couple of Tarzan swings into cargo nets, which were definitely the worst thing to do. I did the first one, but the second one, on the last section of the course, was much higher off the ground and included a much bigger net. The cargo nets were probably the worst part, so I'm afraid I opted out of the second one, as there was an alternative route to take for a slightly easier option. There were also several variations of logs and planks to walk across, some attached together and some swinging freely above the forest floor. Most of these weren't too bad, although it has to be said that for someone of petite stature, it was sometimes difficult to manage the distance between either wood to stand on or ropes to hang on to. I'm proud to say however, that despite being terrified for most of the time, I did not do a Helen Flannagan - there were no tears whatsoever. Obviously there were some slight differences in the proceedings - I had chosen to do this, I knew when it was going to happen and I wasn't so high off the ground. What I did have, however, were some lovely bruises on my upper arms, where I had been using them to 'grip' the plastic covered steel cables that were available to hold on to for some of the challenges.
At the end, there were certificates all round and I could quite cheerfully have gone back and done it all again! I daresay I would have been equally terrified a second time, but I'd have known I could do it. I definitely felt a sense of achievement, but I'll have to wait and see if I've managed to cure my irrational fear of heights. Apparently you can climb over the top of the O2 in London, so I'm hoping to get that done later in the year and then we'll see whether I'm still just as scared!
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