weekend in norfolk - part 2

It wasn't a great start to Sunday morning. It was grey and drizzling. We felt cocooned in our little tent. At least it was warm. The weather forecast predicted the rain to "clear to the east by midday". I wasn't sure what that meant. We wandered into Thetford village. Most of the shops were shut. A coffee break in a little hotel bar provided much needed refreshment from the grey skies. Amused ourselves in Woolworths for a bit. By lunchtime there were breaks in the sky and we felt that we weren't going to be let down by the British forecast for once.

We made our way to Thetford Forest. Arrived way too early so we and went for a short walk before our slot at half past three. Waited a bit. Signed the waiver and soon we were part of a group of fifteen huddled around an instructor Megan. The age and height limit was 10 years old and 1.4m. So there were quite a few small people around. They put to shame the adults who freeze up there. The "challenges" aren't too high - about two or three storeys high. I always enjoyed the outdoor challenges we had to do at school camp (apart from wall climbing - that's really hard) and maybe this could be like OBS all over again.

Here's a picture taken during the practice session on how to put our roller things on the tight rope and how to secure the other two carabinas. As the odds would have it, we had a worrisome mum in our group who wasn't very confident and had to repeat almost everything that the instructor said. One time she asked about her carabina auto-lock not being very tight at which her eleven year old son rolled his eyes and sighed. Pete was very good at not letting her spoil our adventure. Me, not so good.

There are five sites in total on the course, of which the first is a training one and doesn't really count. This meant that there were four huge zip wires altogether! I was looking forward to those. Zip wires are always the most popular at any kids adventure park/playground. The zip wires they had here must be about 75m long. Anyway, they were so far that I couldn't see Pete when he was on the other side. Lucky I'm not embarrassed to communicate by shouting.

The course was expected to take three hours from start to end. Quite a bit was spent waiting around because only three persons can be waiting on a platform while one on a challenge. Unfortunately we got stuck behind the worrisome mum and quite often we had to mumble words of encouragement so that she would hurry up a bit. One of the tarzan swings was when I felt slightly scared. The drop was quite high and I had to double check that the harness was still holding okay. So off I went and it was like being a kid all over again.

So it wasn't like OBS because there wasn't any teamwork. A few of the challenges was hard work but not impossible. The harness meant that I really only felt scared at one of them. I guess one can only overcome their fears once in their life. So when I get old I rarely get scared then? Interesting.

Anyway, here's a video of my only proper landing off the zip wire - by that I mean I didn't land on my bum or my back. My yellow t-shirt needs a second wash.