Go Ape

Plan your perfect adventure at the Outdoors Show
13-16 January 2011 @ ExCel London

Last weeks blog focused on ‘adding more adventure’ to your life and making an effort to not only define what adventure means to you, but pursue a few more of your own for 2011.

Seems only fitting that The Outdoors Show hits the big smoke next week at London’s ExCel. 

The only limit is your imagination…and to fire your imagination, here are just a few of the unforgettable experiences you’ll be able to find out about:

- Hiking Mount Olympus in Cyprus
- Hut to hut hiking in Switzerland
- Via ferrata in the Italian Dolomites
- Discovering the culture of the Berbers in Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains
- Canoeing and hiking your way through spectacular scenery in Banff National Park
- The trek of a lifetime to Everest base camp

Just a few things to tickle those adventure taste-buds! So, like the Go Ape Tribe, if you share a love of the outdoors and a spirit of adventure and want to kickstart your year…this is the place to be inspired. Where will 2011 take you?

http://www.theoutdoorsshow.co.uk

New Years Resolution: Add more adventure to your life?

adventure [ədˈvɛntʃə] n
1. a risky undertaking of unknown outcome
2. an exciting or unexpected event or course of events

There are many quotes about adventure and adventure living, crazy and interesting, thought provoking and inspiring. One that ‘leaps out’ to the Go Ape Tribe is: ”It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves – in finding themselves” (André Gide).

So with the New Year upon us what resolutions did you make? Losing a few pounds and quitting smoking are fine New Year’s resolutions…but some may yearn to do more with their 2011.

England: Maybe your 2011 adventure lies in the Lake District, kite surfing on Walney Island and Cumbria’s western coast, drifting across the fells in a hot air balloon or skydiving and microlighting over the Morecombe sands? Perhaps your idea of an adventure is sampling new and local specialities just waiting to be sampled in the award winning restaurants and pubs of Yorkshire?

Scotland: Perhaps the thrill and excitement of white water rafting , or waterskiing and wakeboarding in and around Loch Lomond and The Trossachs? Maybe (just maybe) you’d like to experience the UK’s first bungee from a bridge in Perthshire, which kicks off in Spring 2011.

Wales: Perhaps your adventure involves Welsh mountain biking at spectacular all weather singletrack trail centres like Coed Y Brenin, Cwm Carn and Gwydyr forest? Or could it  be horse riding: across the mountains of Snowdonia, the gentle hills of Anglesey and the Welsh Marches or the beaches and coastlines of the Pembrokeshire National Park, the Vale of Glamorgan or the Gower Peninsula?

Maybe it’s a tree-top adventure?

“The point is, in 2011, make an effort to not only define what adventure means to you, but pursue a few more of your own…It’ll make for a more interesting and exciting year to say the least, and you may find that it is a more fulfilling one as well”
(Kraig Becker, 2011).

Happy New Year & Live Life More Adventurously!

For a unique New Years resolution think tree-top adventure!

So Christmas is just an Orangutans arm away and the forests are looking picture perfect with the blanket of snow that arrived last weekend. It may well turn out to be one of the coldest Christmas Day’s on record…

Even though our 27 UK adventures are currently closed for the festive period, our Tribe are hard at work to ensure everything is in top top condition for 2011. All our personal protective equipment (PPE) including harnesses and karabiners are being given the five star treatment, weekly inspections of each course to ensure the snow has behaved and general spring cleaning (albeit winter) of the cabins and surrounding forests.

At Go Ape HQ, our Tribe have been busy processing all of the orders that have been flooding in. From there, things are in the hands of the delivery network  but we hope that you will all get to unwrap your gift of adventure this Christmas…we should invent a zip-wire postal service!

Our forest doors will re-open in February half-term at a number of tree-top adventures. If you’re itching to go you can book now in the usual way – either online or over the phone! Looks as though it’s already going to be a bumper one!  

Have a ‘tree-mendous’ Christmas…

If your inner primate simply can’t wait till your next Go Ape trip, take in a bit of simian cinema. Here are our top five monkey movies but do they cut the mustard in your eyes?

1. King Kong
Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy happens to be a forty-foot gorilla. Girl freaks out, boy wins her heart. Boy wreaks havoc in New York and gets shot off skyscraper. The moral of the story? Choose your mate carefully.

2. Planet of the Apes
Ever seen a gorilla riding a horse? What about chimps performing surgery? Or Charlton Heston snogging a monkey? All of this and more in Planet of the Apes. If that’s not worth your Blockbuster fee, we don’t know what is.

3. Ever Which Way But Loose
Every trucker needs a pet orang-utan, right? Clint Eastwood had one called Clyde in Every Which Way But Loose. The film follows them as they roam across America, searching for a long-lost love – Eastwood’s, not Clyde’s, that is.   

4. The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling’s tale was released in 1967 and became an instant family classic. Not hard to see why; Mowgli the man-cub is raised by wolves, hunted by a tiger, then kidnapped by the legendary King of the Swingers.

5. Bedtime for Bonzo
A professor (Ronald Reagan) kidnaps a chimp (Bonzo) to prove that morals are down to nurture, not nature. Sounds deep, but it’s pure, chaotic slapstick. A perfect training ground; if you want to be President of the United States.

Man shares a common ancestor with the ape, but over the years, we’ve come to have our differences…

Head: A typical human has 1.3kg of grey matter, a gorilla just 550g. Koko, the gorilla who found fame learning sign language, has an IQ
of 70-95, compared to 100 for the average human.

Arms: Gorillas have larger muscles in their arms than their legs (the opposite is true for humans), and their armspan is around 60cm longer than the average human male.

Weight: An adult male gorilla can weigh up to 275kgs, more than three heavy men. Female gorillas weigh less, but at 140kgs, they’re still much heavier than the average man.

Diet: Like us, gorillas are omnivores, eating fruit, grass, leaves, termites, snails and caterpillars. They rarely drink in the wild because the 20kg of vegetation they eat each day is half water.

Getting About: Despite walking on all fours, it would actually take the fastest men on Earth to outrun a male gorilla. A gorilla can reach speeds of 20-25mph, the same as an Olympic sprinter.

This year we teamed up with worldwide adventure travel experts Explore! to offer one of our Tribe the chance to win the trip of a lifetime: five days in Rwanda tracking gorillas through the stunning Virunga mountains. The prize included flights, accommodation (including one night in a traditional mud hut), some meals, ground transport and an Explore! tour guide…Want to know who won?

Drum roll please…We’re delighted to announce that Hannah Smith, 31, from Inverleith beat almost 1000 other entrants in our Tribe Magazine competition to win this amazing experience.

Hannah said: “I’m absolutely astounded to have won this amazing adventure. Like most people, I enter competitions without ever thinking I might actually win, so I’m still in shock. For me, seeing any wild animal in its natural habitat is both a privilege and a thrill, so the opportunity to see these extraordinary creatures at close quarters is very special indeed.”

We’ll catch up with Hannah in 2011 for her stories and ‘kodak’ moments!

The JST is a registered charity that owns and operates Lord Nelson and Tenacious, the only two tall ships in the world designed and built to enable people of all physical abilities to sail side-by-side as equals.

Go Ape supply an annual bursary of £5k that helps the financially disadvantaged take part, and we send our staff to make up the numbers when the ships are short on crew…Rebecca Johnson, our Manager at Go Ape Wyre, Worcestershire, joined the crew of Tenacious for an epic eight day voyage in October 2010.

“The Jubilee Sailing Trust take both able bodied and disabled sailors to sea.  I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to sail on Tenacious, one of their ships.  We sailed from London to Southampton via Saint Malo and Cowes. 

I really had no idea what to expect before we set sail, but went with an open mind.  There are no passengers on the ship.  Everyone on board is a working crew member.  Each person works to their own strengths and abilities, and we all worked really hard.  The ship has eight members of permanent crew; Captain, First Mate, Second Mate, Third Mate/Bosun, Medical Purser, Cook, Head Engineer and Engineer.  Then there are a further 40 voyage crew (us!). 

A typical day aboard Tenacious begins when you start your watch.  This could be at midnight, or not until 8am if you’re lucky.  Whilst on watch you have the opportunity to steer the ship, look in the chart room and talk to the Captain, keep a close look out for other vessels and maybe even shout “land ahoy!”. 

Happy Hour has to be the highlight of the morning…! We needed to keep Tenacious looking ship shape, so each day we spent an hour above or below the deck scrubbing, polishing, and cleaning the heads! Everyone helped out, and did what they could to contribute. One of the best things about the JST is that no matter what the job or task, everyone pitches in to help.  You completely work to your own strengths.  Each person on the voyage wants to be there, has paid to be there, and works hard to help out their fellow voyage crew.

We set sail throughout the day (and sometimes through the night) to ensure we made the most of the wind conditions.  We managed to sail for 300 miles down past the Cherbourg Peninsular using only the sails, wind, and some muscle power.  When it comes to bracing the yards (basically heaving on ropes to pull the sails around to better catch the wind) again everyone helps to the best of their ability.  We couldn’t do it unless each person contributes what they can.

Whilst on board there is the opportunity to climb the masts to see the ship and surrounding sea or land.  This is not for the faint hearted, but will guarantee some breathtaking views!  When we arrive in port we do wheelies aloft …which is helping the wheelchair users up to the fore top platform.  This is done by a team of people heaving on a rope to pull the wheelchairs up to about 30 foot.  The wheelchair users really had to trust the heaving team, but by this point in the voyage we’d formed such a close team and knew we could depend on each other.

I had a brilliant week on Tenacious.  I think the JST are a superb charity and offer exceptional holidays to both abled and disabled crew members. All week I worked incredibly hard, and have the bruises and bleary eyes to prove it!  And best of all, I met some genuinely inspiring people, and have made some true and firm friendships which I hope will last a lifetime.

So for me, all of this was made possible through Go Ape.  Go Ape sponsor the JST and occasionally the opportunity arises for an employee to spend a week with the JST.  I only discovered the JST and the brilliant work it does  because of Go Ape, and am very proud to work for an organisation that wholeheartedly supports such a worthwhile charity.”

http://www.jst.org.uk/

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