Go Ape

Mark went to Go Ape last April with his niece and parents, I was very jealous as was at work.  We finally got a day together and Mark booked us in at Go Ape, Cannock.  Yeah!!

I expected Go Ape to be dead easy and just a few zip lines here and there – how wrong was I!!  We started with a safety briefing and shown how to put our harnesses on, after the initial briefing and short demo you are left to it to some extent.  We were shown which clips clipped to what and it was all quite easy as everything was colour coded and the important thing was – always stay clipped on!! 

Off we went fully briefed, it started with a tall rope ladder into the tree tops, no problem I thought, halfway up I started to notice how high I was going – it didn’t look this high from the ground!  Go Ape is split into 5 sections, each one starts with a climb into the tree tops and ends with a zip line which takes you back onto the forest floor.  In amongst these are rope bridges, tarzan swings, rope nets, suspended tunnels and more! 

The first tarzan swing I was a bit unsure about jumping off a platform that high up, but I gathered myself together and went for it.  To start with I was proceeding quite cautiously over the crossings from tree to tree but as I came to section 5 I was a lot more confident.  However it came to the last tarzan swing which was the biggest off them all and quite a drop off the platform!  A girl in front sat on the edge and bottled it, I knew I wanted to do it and wasn’t going to take the easy route round (which some did and consisted off a rope bridge).  So I stood on the edge (didn’t sit) and thought I had to go for it so I stepped off that platform (I think I had my eyes closed) – once off it was great and I wanted to go again! 

All in all it was a great fun experience and lasted about 2 ½ hours.  I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie and it scared me a little bit which was great as I like a bit of a challenge!  A friend of mine went for a hen do at a Go Ape venue, our instructor had said they had recently had a stag do – think this would be great fun with a group of you :)