After two action packed days at Lake Windermere, we upped the ante on Monday and booked ourselves onto a Treetop Trek at Brockhole visitor centre, just a few miles up the road from Bowness. We hopped on the bus at the ferry terminal and got a family day ticket for an eye watering £20 - not the best value public transport, especially as we only wanted to travel a few miles! But at least the bus dropped us outside Brockhole, a popular tourist centre with playparks, visitor centre, nature hides and more. And Treetop Trek too, of course. We had booked the shorter version, feeling two hours and 17 metres up was a bit much for a first attempt. It was also a bit cheaper - £68 for the hour, while the 2 hour trek was £100. The 1 hour trek is suitable from age 5, and the 2 hour one from age 7. As we made our way up to the main centre for a quick lunch before we headed to the trees, we passed under the rope bridges and aerial slides of the longer, more challenging trek and the Tornado Twins eyes were out on stalks. It looked amazing and I was slightly disappointed we'd chosen to do the shorter trek. We had a sandwich for lunch in the cafe (not the best, I'd take your own picnic!) and then had a play in the large adventure play park. For kids under 5, there's something called Treetop Nets, where they can play up in the canopy and have loads of fun. We also got our first glimpse of the 250m triple zip slide we would be careering down in the near future. Gulp! At 1.45, we took ourselves to the Treetrek centre, removed our wedding rings and stored our valuables safely before strapping ourselves and the children into safety harnesses. There was a safety demonstration and lots of prechecks to do before we were lead into the tower to start our trek. Suddenly I was rather glad we were on the shorter trek, it seemed much higher up once you were there! We let the others all go first before Tommy took the first steps out onto the wobbly wooden bridge. After him went the girls without even a hesitation. I was so proud of them! Then it was my turn - it was a strange feeling, being so high and knowing you were safe, but still that slight feeling of fear remains. I'd like at this point to say a thank you to Tommy, for making me laugh so hard at one point while I was on a rope obstacle, that the supervisor shouted over to see if I was OK! I think my shrieks of laughter were taken for fear. So thanks for that, Tommy! Some of the older kids zipped round the course very quickly but we took the full hour and it was brilliant fun. We were all chuffed with ourselves when we took the final aerial slide of the course and climbed the stairs up the big zip wire. We have some video of TT 2 and myself launching ourselves off the rather high platform, but sadly I can't get it to work on here or Facebook yet. I'll keep working on it! It was quite an experience and a fantastic confidence booster for the girls, who were totally buzzing afterwards. We would highly recommend it to anyone taking a Lakes trip. Thankfully, after all that fun, we were able to jump on a bus easily back to Windermere, where we visited the shops, before boarding another bus back to take us down the road to Bowness. Bedtime was relatively early that night, thankfully, as we were leaving the next day to return home. But we know we'll be back to Bowness and the Lakes, we had an excellent time and there's still lots for us to see. Read more about our trips away in the October holidays.
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