Go Ape

Liz and her husband Cliff applied for the Adventure Bursary and were awarded the £600 for their adventure cycling in Borneo and climbing the highest mountain in South East Asia.

They also had a go on the world’s highest via ferrata (a bit like Go Ape, but on the side of a mountain rather than in the trees) – why walk down a mountain when you can go down the sheer rock face with ropes and harnesses?!

Here, in our guest blog, she tells us all about it:

“We started at the sea with our bikes and climbed 2000m in70km to get to the base of Mount Kinabalu. We arrived after eight hours of cycling, pleased to be there only to be greeted by a bemused hotel employee who couldn’t understand why we hadn’t hired motorbikes!

The next day we reached the summit just in time to see the sun rise, a beautiful experience where we could see right back down to the coast and the capital.

We ran down the mountain as far as the via ferrata, put our harnesses on and then our guide invited us to step over the edge of the sheer rock face and walk down the rock. Wow! There was a drop of a couple of two thousand metres below us and the view was stupendous. It was so exciting, every moment of the weaving to and fro across the rock face and pausing to admire the view of the mountains and villages and the sun just coming up. There were rope bridges just like at Go Ape, but these ones had a drop of a couple of hundred metres below!

We spent another two weeks cycling in Borneo spending a night in a traditional Longhouse and we saw mangrove swamps where the crabs rule the world.

Whenever you go somewhere interesting on holiday you hope for a few interesting cultural experiences and we found lots. We can’t wait for our next adventure!”

Here at Go Ape we’ve always got our ears close to the ground for news of incredible adventures and we just picked up this story about Kirsi Montonen, an Antarctic-crossing, ultra-marathon-running hairdresser from Finland. Kirsi is hoping that she and her two fellow runners, friend Greg Maud and husband Jukka Viljanen, will become the first people to run 1000km across the Kalahari sands, in less than 20 days. Here’s her story, and news of how you could win £600 towards your next adventure.

 Haircut 1000

What kind of person decides to run more than a marathon distance, every day for 20 days, across one of the world’s least hospitable landscapes in extreme heat? A weather-beaten athlete? A hardened adventurer? A Finnish hairdresser?

Kirsi Montonen is all of the above. Co-owner of a hair salon in her hometown of Espoo in Finland, she, together with her husband Jukka Viljanen and South African friend Greg Maud, is planning to run 1000km across the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, in just 20 days.

Her extreme exploits began when, aged 42, she went to film Jukka taking part in the North Pole Marathon in 2007. Not happy to sit on the fringe, next time she joined in herself, on a challenge at the opposite end of the temperature scale, running 195km non-stop across the Libyan Sahara.

She completed the race, even though the exertion put her in a wheelchair for two months. But that didn’t crop her endurance career short. She got herself trim, and the following year ran the Stockholm Marathon. She also became the fastest woman to run the Patriot Hills 100km marathon in Antarctica.

All those extremes in climate don’t seem to have affected Kirsi’s determination, or her hair. As far as the team know, it’s the first time anyone has ever run a full crossing of the Kalahari Desert. The three will cover around 31 miles every day, raising money for the Cheetah Conservation Botswana project, the Kalahari 1000 Challenge’s nominated charity.

It’s not just a case of endurance – the trio will be running across loose sand, shaking it out of their shoes as they go, and will have to dodge lions, leopards, Black Mamba snakes and Mozambique Spitting Cobras, all looking to give them a quick short back and sides.

To find out more about Kirsi, Jukka and Greg, and to keep up to date with their progress, check out the expedition website: www.kalahari1000.com

GRAB! £600 towards your next adventure

If you’re a budding explorer planning a grand sand-based expedition, enter our draw to win a Go Ape adventure bursary. Every 60 days we’re giving away £600 to put towards a life-changing trip. The winner of the last draw was Liz and her husband who’s adventure on bikes took them to visit the orang utangs and via ferrata in Borneo (more on that later). You could be next. To win the cash, we want you to tell us all about what you’re aiming to do – submit your story at www.goape.co.uk/adventurebursary to enter the draw. Good luck!

With thanks to www.kalahari1000.com for the image

Greg James popped to Alice Holt this morning to kick off his week of challenges set by fellow presenter Scott Mills.

He’s talking about his experience live on air as we type!!

Great Tarzan impression Greg!

There are lots of pictures on the Radio 1 website

We’re delighted to be welcoming so many people into Thetford Forest to have a go on Go Trax.

10 people can go in one session, costing £20 each. There are three off road tracks to try out and you can go round as many times as you like within your time!

Hopefully see you there soon!  Oh…and can you spot the person wearing one of our brand new tees?!

Scouting For Girls have been off the beatn track with Go Trax – All Terrain Segway.

The guys tested out our epic new forest adventure with a down-to-earth twist, at Thetford Forest, Suffolk prior to their concert recently.

Check out the video and hear what they had to say

Frankie Sandford and her Suffolk band mates Una Healy, Rochelle Wiseman and Vanessa White spent some time with us in the trees at Thetford Forest …warming up before their performance there on Saturday night for 6,000 fans.

It’s all part of the Forestry Commission Live Music Series which has seen the likes of Scouting for Girls performing in the forest (and trying out our newest adventure: Go Trax: All Terrain Segway).

Apprently, we have helped Una conquer her fear of heights. Well done Una!!

 Read the full story

Here’s the first of our guest blogs from the guys that won the first Go Ape Adventure Bursary of the year. They got £600 worth of equipment to help them achieve their challenge: completing the Welsh 3000s.

“It’s generally agreed there’s 14 or 15 mountains in Wales are over 3000 ft high. Our challenge was to reach the top of all of them in one day.

For those of you with an enquiring mind that’s about 46.5km with 3,900m of climb, or, if you prefer 27.9 miles and 12,800 ft of climb. However, those distances are from the top of the first mountain to the top of the last.  You also have to get to the top of the first (Snowdon, the highest point in England or Wales) and off the last, so it’s actually quite a lot further.

We set off at 5.30am from the Llanberis car park at the foot of Snowdon.  Our plan was to dog trot most of the way, actually we took a dog with us as well who did his best to pull up over a variety of cliffs throughout the day.

There were 4 in our group, our other group of 5 set off at the same time but were intending to take it at steadier pace.

Our first ascent was Crib Goch, not for the faint hearted.  If you can imagine walking along your roof ridge for about a mile with a steep fall, steeper than your roof, on either side then that’s Crib Goch. 

We reached the top of Snowdon just after 7:00am and ran down fairly briskly until we reached our short cut, down a steep gully.  It didn’t look too bad from the top.  But once committed to what had looked like grass banks turned out to be slippery rocks covered by moss.  I fell quite a way, luckily my fall was cushioned by my sarnies, which I mashed to a pulp, yum yum.

Having reached back down to the bottom we had to climb back up, bag a peak or two then tackle Tryffan – a great scramble.  I have to confess we didn’t jump between the twin pillars at the top.

A few more tops then back down to just a couple of hundred metres before we tackled the final section known as the Carnedd section.  This involves a huge, grinding ascent, it’s one of those climbs when you keep thinking you’ve reached the top only to see another ridge ahead of you!  However, once on top, apart from being about 12 miles long, this section is pretty easy going.  There’s one outlying peak that you have to detour about a kilometre off the route to reach with quite a descent and climb, but once you’ve done that it’s simply a question of doing the miles at a steady trot over the broken surface.

It took us about 11½ hours from the top of the 1^st to top of the last peak, but another 3 hours or so getting on and off, so about 14 hours in total.  Luckily the weather was good, fairly chilly but dry.

It’s a great challenge, because it’s tough, but achievable for any, very determined, reasonably fit person.  There’s a great website www.welsh3000s.co.uk that describes it in far more detail and is well worth a visit.”

Our tribes from our 26 Go Ape adventures around the country have just completed their annual charity giveaway. We challenge our course managers and their teams to decide who locally will most benefit from our contribution. Check out the winners below of some of the happy recipients, including Sustrans, the UK’s leading sustainable transport charity, RNLI lifeboat and lifeguard service and the Scouts Association in West Glamorgan.

Two of our instructors from Go Ape Grizedale have just arrived back from their 2 ½ month trekking and mountaineering trip in Patagonia.

They travelled through Chile and Argentina,  going on extended treks and climbing volcanoes and mountains up to 6300m. 

During  their 5 day Torres del Paine trek they saw about 5 people in the wilderness, trekking over mountain passes, next to glaciers and through windy and hostile weather.

Patagonia is one of the wildest places still left on earth. Take a look at the amazing pictures of their adventure!

When Kevin Shannon was a kid all he wanted to be was an explorer. Now he’s all grown up he’s making his dreams come true by taking on a zero-emissions solo challenge to circumnavigate the globe, with nothing but a couple of panniers and a pushbike. Read his story, then find out how you could win £600 towards your next adventure.

Get on your bike and go global

What do you want to be when you grow up? A ballet dancer? A fireman?

If you’d asked Kevin Shannon that when he was a kid, he’d have said: ‘An explorer.’ Maybe you did too.

But Kevin’s a bit different. Instead of getting a sensible, steady office job that pays the bills, when he grew up he decided to make his childhood dreams of high adventure come true, and actually become an explorer.

Which is, of course, why we like him. Just before Easter, his bags all packed and ready, he said goodbye to his mum and dad and friends and set out to see the whole wide world. He will circumnavigate the globe on a three-year solo expedition, raising money for the charity Combat Stress as he goes.

‘After living and studying in London I decided I wasn’t ready to settle down and face a career. I still had to cure my wanderlust; I still needed to explore; I still wanted an adventure,’ he says.

Growing up in Mobberley in Cheshire, he heard grand tales of the village’s most famous hero, George Mallory, who died trying to be the first man to the summit of Mount Everest.

‘The tales captivated me so much, I dreamt of being an explorer myself,’ Kev says. ‘Every bit of my free time was spent exploring the village I grew up in, the local woodland, following the little stream that passes by the village as far as possible to see where it ended, hoping that one day I would be able to explore far-off lands.’

Now Kev is fulfilling his ambition to travel far, far away. To add to the challenge, he’s resolved to complete the journey with zero emissions. So he’ll pedal over land and either row or use the power of the wind to cross several seas and both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

That’s no mean feat. As he says: ‘This is my Everest.’

To find out more about Kev and keep up-to-date with his progress, have a look at his website www.becauseitisthere.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @kev_shannon

GRAB! £600 towards your next adventure

If you’re a budding explorer planning a grand land-based expedition then enter our draw to win a Go Ape adventure bursaries. Every 60 days we’re giving away £600 to put towards a life-challenging trip. You could be next. To win the cash, we want you to tell us all about what you’re aiming to do – submit your story. Good luck!