James' 28th Birthday.

Trying to keep anything a surprise is nearly impossible. I decided to book an activities afternoon for the day before James' birthday back in February. Of course by the end of February he knew exactly where we were going even if everyone pretended he didn't. On Sunday the 17th April we Myself, James and a group of friends made our way to the new Go Ape course near Southampton. We were lucky to have beautiful weather for April. I'm sure the afternoon would not have been nearly as fun if it were raining.

More photos.

When we got there we were taught how to use our harnesses and how to link them to the safety lines. We also had the Go Ape mantra drummed into us: 'Always stay attached'. It didn't take long for us to realise why. We made our way around a course that consisted of wobbly ladders to climb into the trees, lots of obstacles to make our way over in the tree tops and several zip lines to bring us back to ground level. Possibly the scariest moment was just before doing a Tarzan jump. Basically I hooked myself up and jumped before I could chicken out. The rope had slack in it so I dropped about 3 feet before swinging several meters to land in a net suspended in the trees. I only discovered later that the deep breath I take before jumping only helps me scream.

The last obstacle was a series of ropes that you had to walk across, suspended up near the tree tops. One of my friends insisted that I had to talk her across because she was starting to feel sick being so high up and couldn't look at her feet in case she saw how far away the ground was. I think several of us discovered we were not as happy with heights as we thought we were. I think we all had good fun though.

To recover in the evening we made our way to Emsworth for a BBQ and birthday cake in the back garden. All in all a fun day though possibly not a surprise for the birthday boy.