Go Ape!
Grizedale Forest Hawkshead LA22 0QJ
Release your inner superhero with a tree-top adventure in Grizedale Forest. The Go Ape! outfit hooks you up with all the gear, gives you a safety briefing and then unleashes you on the walkways, ladders, bridges, swings and zip-wires strung between the high trees in Grizedale Forest. The good-natured shrieking and hollering echoing through the forest tells you all you need to know – it’s fantastically good fun, with all sorts of personal challenges and daredevil thrills to negotiate as you wend your way around the course. Inching along a steel cable strung between towering pines, swinging Tarzan-style into a catch-net, dashing along an Indiana Jones rope bridge – could it be any more fun? Zip wires connect the different sections of the site, and the whole circuit takes a good couple of hours. If it sounds a bit too alarming, don't worry. Kids take to it with glee (they'll be egging you on in no time), and there are escape routes and easier sections along the way for the fainthearted. A Junior version (for kids over 1 metre tall) puts 'tiny Tarzans' through their paces on a separate, specially designed course that's not so full-on, but still great fun nonetheless. There are Go Ape! courses all over the UK (including another Lake District one at Whinlatter Forest) but Grizedale is the highest and most challenging – the course tops out at over 18 metres above ground level and there’s a fabulous 275-metre-long zip-wire to finish with. If the speeding zips are your thing, there's even a separate 'Zip Trek' adventure – seven tandem zip lines above the high pines for tree-top racing. Prefer feet (almost) on the ground? Their 'Forest Segway' tour lets you explore Grizedale's trails for an hour on an all-terrain Segway.
