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!”