May 31, 2011

Urban Climb

Urban Climb This weekend saw a birthday outing for Eloise's class.

It was little Daisey's birthday and she was turning 5. Eloise is in a combination class of Preppies and Year Ones which is quite nice as it means she gets exposure to more kids, and as they're younger she probably looks after them, or something, knowing her.

The birthday party was to be a climbing party. A rock climbing party. That raised a few eyebrows...

I volunteered to be a belayer, that would be the chap that ties the ropes and stops the terrornauts from falling to their deaths.

Anyway we turned up at this place called Urban Climb. It's basically a warehouse with some big walls in it, and they're covered in colour-coded hand- and foot-holds.

We goggled a bit at the really impressive overhanging walls, wondering how on earth anyone was going to escape alive, then thought what the hell, presumably if the body count were too high, they'd probably get shut down or something.

After a while the volunteer belayers were taken to one side and training commenced. We learned how to tie bits of rope to harnesses and stuff like that.

And before long we were tying children to our pieces of rope and they were haring up the walls like little monkeys.

Eloise did particularly well. She was initially nervous but pretty soon she was up and down the walls in an inexhaustible cycle of climbing.

She got Daisey's Dad to belay her up the overhang and almost made it up the straight part using the difficult handknobs. Every time she fell off she was determined to try again and she was the proverbial last man standing at the end of the day.

She's agitating for a return visit already.

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