Grown up is overrated

Zipworld Treetop Nets are the perfect antidote to being an adult.  A blissful escape from the world of bills, responsibilities and deadlines - an opportunity to go back to being a kid again and having a spot of pure, un-ADULT-erated fun!

We're no strangers to the Zipworld experiences and although the blurb makes this sound like a bit of a scary adventure - "more than 60 foot above the forest floor" - it's actually enormous fun.

There are no harnesses or hard hats and no shimmying up big ladders to get to the adventure.  There's a full safety briefing before you head off and the trampoline walkway begins on the forest floor leading you gently up and along to the first platforms.

We were in a mixed group with ages (based on pure guesswork) ranging from around 5 to over 60 and we all had an enormous amount of fun.  There's a separate smaller net reserved for kids under 7 but the rest of the nets are open to all.  Within 2 minutes of being up there any notion of being reserved and sensible had gone out of the window and we were bouncing up and down and shouting and laughing louder than the kids.

Obviously the kids had way more energy, but we grown ups soon had it sussed - if we sat down on the nets the bouncing kids gave us a free ride, propelling us up and down as they tore around.

Groups are identified by coloured wristbands and each groups gets 1 hour on the nets - which is more than enough for my aching adult body, though my inner child could have stayed up there a LOT longer.

Preparing to release my inner child

As this was the launch evening there was entertainment laid on in the form of Mike Peters who, as well as fronting the ever popular band The Alarm, has also been battling cancer for many years.  He co-founded the charity the Love Hope Strength Foundation which promotes innovative, music related, outreach and awareness programmes for leukemia and cancer suffers, survivors and their families.  

Reining my inner child in temporarily I chatted to a number of local B&B owners about the impact of the Zipworld attractions on their businesses and they were all 100% positive.  There are three Zipworld sites across North Wales (Bethesda, Blaenau Ffestiniog and Betws-y-Coed) each of them offering a different range of activities - some family friendly and some designed to scare the bejeebers out of you, so there's pretty much something for everyone (even if you just want to sit down with a cup of coffee and a cake while the others go off tearing around!)

Every year these attractions draw in large numbers of visitors - visitors who need somewhere to stay, something to eat and other things to do while they're there, all of which add valuable money to the local economy and living in Cumbria we completely understand how vital visitors are to our local economy.

Anyway, enough of all this grown up talk - I'll leave you with a selection of photos and videos that go some way to showing what a fantastic experience the Treetop Nets are.  Time to step away from the spreadsheet and let your inner child out for a breath of fresh air.