Southampton 2023 - Ape-ing Around at Moors Valley (Day 3)

 

You may have noticed by now that there can tend to be a bit of a theme in our holidays of us at some point doing Go Ape. We have said we would like to have a go at as many of the courses as we can, and also still had some of our gift voucher to spend, therefore decided to tackle Go Ape at Moors Valley Country Park. This is somewhere that Nicole used to go a lot when she was younger as it features a play trail, which is a series of different natural and wildlife themed play equipment spread out through the woods. Although we explored this later on, we started our day off with Go Ape.

I would say that this Go Ape Course is probably my favourite so far. They seem to have done a lot of work on it since Nicole last completed it (although admittedly this was probably at least 15 years ago!). They have a different safety system in place than the other Go Ape courses we have done, which involves you being connected to the course at all times once you are on a section rather than having to constantly clip and unclip between places and therefore risk being unhooked at some stage. This made the whole thing feel a lot safer. Combining this with the omission of the horrible ladders that you usually have to climb up to get to the course which feel like they are dragging you back to the floor, a skateboard zip wire to ride, and the implementation of instructors clipping you onto the tarzan swing to make it less of a daunting experience of self-trust, it was a fantastic course! This is definitely one that we wouldn’t think twice about doing again.

After we had come back down to ground level and had some lunch, we explored the woodlands and walked by the lake, before treating ourselves to an ice cream from the Norris & Binglewort Ice Cream Kiosk. This offers flavoured soft whippy ice cream, as well as a dairy-free alternative, and made a change from the usual scoop ice creams you get when you’re out and about.

Once we’d enjoyed our ice cream and explored everywhere we wanted to go, we headed back for some chill time before spending the evening with some of Nicole’s family.