Go Ape

This is K in her new office. Parents hope their children will go up in the world, but this isn't quite what we imagined.

Apart from scrambling about in tree tops, instructors at Go Ape have to pull themselves up the several zip wires to open the course each day, rain or shine. She's beginning to pack some serious muscles, and my days of bettering her at arm wrestling may be numbered.

When I was a kid we lived in a valley in the Chilterns, with a garden that fell steeply down from the beech woods of the Duke of Buckingham's estate. My father rigged up a steel zip wire from some left over rigging. We had to climb up a ladder, grasp a metal bar slung from a pulley, and launch ourselves off. It was fantastic fun - provided you remembered to lift yourself above the nettle patch halfway down, and let go before you slammed into the conker tree at the bottom. Health and Safety wouldn't have approved (but then they wouldn't have approved of much of what we got up to, like being towed up the lane on a sledge behind the Landrover when it snowed).

These zip wires are a different matter, and heights cause bits of my anatomy to try to retract in a manner they're not designed to, so I am plucking up courage before I have a go...