School holidays are a time for having fun with friends – and that includes the staff! A colleague’s birthday seemed to be a good excuse for a number of the staff from Lakelands School to get together at the Adventure Ropes Course for an afternoon of fun and fear. After several weeks of getting it just right with the weather, it all went wrong today. The heavens opened just as I was finishing setting everything up and, with the exception of a few dry spells, the afternoon was a bit of a wash out. However, everyone was determined to make the best of it and didn’t really allow the conditions to effect the afternoon’s fun.
We started off the session on the Crate Stack, in an effort to ease everyone into the whole heights thing. With an appropriate time limit on each group to keep things moving, most managed to get their towers to a height of 7 crates. However, with a surprising burst of speed and efficiency in the last 90 seconds, one group managed to trump the others by completing their 8th level. Very impressive!
In an attempt to get out of the worst of the rain, we headed into the Adventure Tunnels next. Due to the thick and grey cloud cover above, there was even less light than usual in the tunnel system which made the entrance a pretty daunting proposition. However, once they got going and eyes started to adjust, everyone actually made surprisingly good progress. With a bit of trial and error, and some interesting interpretations of the phrase ‘descending order’ (especially coming from a maths teacher!) they managed to crack the code to get out of the tunnels at the top of the tower.
Once at the top of the tower, some people like to come down using the stairs. However, the easiest (and most enjoyable) way is to jump out of the door. The parachute simulator is a pretty quick way down, but it can take a little while to psych yourself up to step out of a door 30 foot up when there’s a perfectly good set of stairs behind you. It’s a great little activity and one which people tend to want to do again and again once they’ve managed to step out of the door the first time.
To finish off the afternoon, everyone quite literally pulled together on the Giant Swing. As the rain started to fall harder, and more people found shelter wherever they could, the brave souls that stuck out the torrential rain had to work all the harder to winch up the next pair of joyriders. This is one of those activities where you have total control of how high you go (within limits!), but the vast majority of pairs wanted to keep going higher and higher. When the Giant Swing is released there is a customary moment of freefall which often results in some interesting facial expressions and/or colourful language. Today was no exception!
It was definitely an afternoon of facing fears for a few people today, but who better to do it with than friends and family. Happy Birthday Marge!
