Al and Susan had asked me if I wanted to come along to
Go Ape in Grizedale Forest, and as is my way these days, I said 'yes', and then wondered what I'd let myself in for. A high-level adventure through the tree canopy, featuring rope bridges, slides, and swings. I'd never done anything much like that before. I'd been on a wobbly bridge high up in the Australian forest, but that was a proper bridge. This new adventure required harness, ropes, clips and a definite head for heights.
In the morning I found my Rainforest Action Movement t-shirt and decided it was right for the day. A day to get up there with the trees and see things how they see it. Get their point of view. I bought that t-shirt about 14 years ago, on a conference trip to Charleston. My first trip to the USA. It's mainly white with some green rainforest and splashes of colour from a tree-frog, a jaguar, a butterfly and the beak of a happy toucan. On the back a bulldozer destroys the forest. I treasure this t-shirt, and it has never been in a washing machine. I only ever hand wash it.
So with my Rainforest t-shirt and my army trousers, it was off to Grizedale. We had a little walk round the sculptures in the morning and then some lunch by the pond. At 3pm it was time to sign our lives away and for Zoe to strap us hard into our harnesses. Ouch. A quick safety talk which Zoe rattled off like she'd done it a thousand times and then it was off up the first rope ladder. And onto the first rope bridge. And down the first slide. Woooo. Landed on my arse.
Soon got into the routine for each little trip between the trees. Pulley, blue safety, red safety behind. Go. At the other end, red safety off, onto the tree, blue safety off, onto the tree, pulley off. At all times you are connected to the safety cables by at least one line. The spring carabiners they use sometimes don't close completely, so a final check is always a good idea. Once or twice I found myself checking my clips half way across, 40 feet up, standing on a thin wire or a narrow log. Pointless, if they had been unclipped it would only have scared me, and I wouldn't have been able to clip them back up anyway.
The second slide was huge. You could hardly see the pile of sand that made the landing site. Al went down first. The noise was like a tube train. Crunch - he landed backwards in a spray of sand. Susan did better, and I managed to work out how to rotate and landed nicely.
There was a bit of a traffic jam at the next zone, and we could see why. The stirrups. Ten ordinary horse-riding stirrups suspended on six-foot ropes from two parallel ropes going between the trees. You had to step from one to the other. "Dont look down" was not an option. You'd never see the stirrups! Plus you were having to stand on one foot, wobbling around, hanging on to a rope, 40ft up. The stirrups was the first challenge that rated 'black' - the most difficult rating. We got across it okay, then a few more bridges and another slide down.
The fourth section contained the barrels. You first went up a rope ladder and then ahead of you was a tunnel of barrel proportions. Al was ahead of me, and crawled through on his hands and knees, only to get a bit stuck at the far end. He had to curl up tight to get his feet out onto the platform. I decided to tacke it on my back, and went head first into the barrels, and pulled myself along by the wooden slats that made up the tunnel. At the end I hauled myself out and hanging on to the edge over the gap between the barrels and the tree, brought out my legs and made it to the platform.
The last section of the course contained the big challenge of the Tarzan Swing. Blacker than black. This was 'Extreme Black'. It was this that was causing the vast majority of yelping and screaming from some of the other people in the trees. You clipped on to a rope from a platform. Red clip, blue clip. Then on a count of three from Zoe, stepped off. A leap of faith. A six foot fall and then the rope went taut, a moment of g-force and then you're flying towards a cargo net. Splat, like a fly in a web. Hang on, as the returning rope tries to pull you back. Climb up the cargo net and over to the next platform. Clip on, let the rope fly back for the next person. After another wobbly bridge was the Bosun's Chair, a level wire with a rope for pulling yourself along. If you had enough faith in your safety, you could jump off the platform and glide on your pulley all the way to the other side. I gave it a go, and just made it. A final slide down and we were back in the car park. My anatomy was glad to get the harness off.
So then we headed off to Ambleside, for pizza at Zefferelis. There was only one choice for us, the Zeff's Rain Forest Pizza. No, this did not contain sliced bromeliads, but lots of good veggies and jalapenos. And Zeffs make a donation to a Rainforest charity for every one they sell.
Only when I got home, and went to google for something did I see it was Earth Day. It's not something that's big in this country, but the day's activities seemed strangely appropriate for it.
