Going Ape

With V Festival coming up and us in possession of a new tent, my boyfriend decided that we had to test it out. Now, I'm not that girlie a girl, but camping has never been my idea of fun. My protests were to no avail - we were booked to stay near Ullswater in the Lake District.

We met up on Friday night with Darren's parents who have a nice comfy trailer tent, along with his son Jordan and his mate Marcus. So much for summer - looks like it's all over. It was really quite cold overnight - my boyfriend mocked me for wearing jogging bottoms and a fleece but when I woke on Saturday morning he was wrapped up in his fleece! We made our way over to the trailer tent where his mum was cooking up a fine breakfast - we would need a lot of energy today...

We were about to Go Ape. Basically, Go Ape takes you up over rope bridges, tramlines, cargo nets, up rope ladders and down zip lines in the forest. This one was in Grizedale Forest, and there are 6 other locations around the UK. You are fitted with a harness and taken through a pretty rigorous training session before you are let loose on your own. At all times you keep yourself attached to the trees, so you're never in any danger, even on a tiny platform 60ft up a tree! I was amazed at how confident I was with it all. Until one of the last obstacles that is - a "Tarzan swing" into a cargo net. Unlike the zip lines which you could almost sit into, with this you had to jump off the platform a free fall about 10ft before the rope tightened. I still did it (even if I did scream a bit!)

It was a real sense of accomplishment to complete the whole course. I'd highly recommend going - it takes about 3-4 hours to go round and if it's quiet you can even go round again. You don't have to be particularly fit or young even - the oldest person to complete the course was 86 years old!!! Have a look at Darren's blog for some pics.

On the Sunday we said goodbye to our fellow campers and made our way back across the country. On our way down we'd taken a wrong turning off the A66 into some strange place called Rhegad, and as we were passing again we thought we'd check it out. Turns out it's a strange shopping centre / cinema / exhibition hall / conference centre hybrid. It's been built into a hill so you can bearly see it from the nearby roads. We had a good nosy around the shops. My favourites were Taste, a proper foodies food shop with lots of local produce, Saunders the chocolate shop where you could watch them making the chocolates through the window, and Talent, an art and furnishings shop with lots of fabulous individual pieces (I would love to be rich enough to fill my home full of these things!)

There is a giant cinema screen which shows movies on things like Everest, the Grand Canyon and the Serengeti, and the National Mountaineering Exhibition, but we decided not to pay for these. The temporary Buddhist Himalaya market was a bit disappointing. All in all it was a slightly odd place, but it's worth a look around if you're in the area and fancy something unusual.

And so to V!!! Please pray for me that it doesn't rain!!!