Sunday, September 4

The rain had disappeared in the night. We had breakfast and began gardening. I spent some time getting moss of the roof of the carport. I then built a shelf that Irma had bought for Naa and we loaded into the car.

We drove to Naa’s, dropped off the shelf, collected Naa, and drove to collect Niilia. Irma has arranged for us all to go to Kookee, an “adventure park” next door to the zoo. I have very little idea of what to expect, and the website gave me little to go on except that it contains ziplines. I imagine something like an army assault course, or the set of the old Gladiators tv show, without the Gladiators.

We arrive at Kookee and I realise that I had had entirely the wrong images in my head. We get our harnesses and a helmet, and receive instruction on how to use the two smart clamps safely. Then we climb a ladder on the training course, attach our smart cables to the safety wire, walk along a wire, unattach our clamps, reattach them to the next safety wire, and slide down a short zip line back to the ground.

Kookee contains ten courses, each numbered and strung through the big trees in the wood.. They all begin by climbing a ladder or a net, or a climbing wall. The first ladder rises ten feet or so. Subsequently ladders and nets rise up to ten metres. Once up we find ourselves faced with various rope walkways, or tightropes, or jumps. We also have to traverse spaces on buckets hung from ropes, sledges, astride a ball, and more. Naa and Niilia start on course 2. Irma wants to start on course 1, so we go there. Once up the ladder she decides that she will not find this fun and sensibly descends to become to official photographer.

I catch up with the girls when I do course 3 and they do course 4 and we discover that both courses end by using the same zipline. We end up going down one after the other and decide to carry on together with level 5. The levels get higher up the trees. By the time the park begins to close we have completed level 6, which contained two tricky sections, both about fifteen metres off the ground. We all feel like we have had more than our money’s worth and return our harnesses.

We will drive home and Irma will cook chicken pasta before taking Naa and Niilia home. I will notice that my shoulders, wrists, knees and thighs have decided to begin aching. I will take this to mean that I should do this sort of thing more often.