Taking advantage of the great weather we decided at the last minute to eschew our Macs (and Kamesh’s PC) for the day and hit the great outdoors (that green stuff Kev), being the environmentally friendly bunch that we are we carpooled (bonus points) our way to Wendover Woods in Bucks (next to Aston Hill MTB centre) to try out their Go Ape setup. 

For the uninitiated Go Ape is basically tree climbing, swinging and sliding for kidults and is a highly recommended day out !

As a brand experience it works really well, the instructors are all decked out in black (maintaining that professional but cool image), their briefing is well rehearsed and delivered and the actual setup of the course and the thought that has gone into the safety aspects of it work really well. Rather than guide you along they throw a lot of the emphasis back on to you with regards your safety. This is really refreshing (and a welcome relief from the theme-park mentality this could have easily taken). The psychology of the equipment (red and blue safety lines) makes the process very easy to pick up after tackling a couple of the obstacles, and by the end of the day its almost second nature.

Throughout the course are well designed graphic interpretation boards telling you about worldwide de-forestation and the role of the forest as lungs for the planet, these are placed throughout the courses and are great to read whilst waiting for your team to climb the next ladder. So you also get to learn something along the way !

Anyway great fun was had by all and hopefully our creative spirits are rejuvenated and enlivened by the experience.The pics and videos below should give you more of an insight and the whole selection are on our Flickr photostream if you want to see more…and the Go Ape website which shows all the locations is here.

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