Travel: Devon for daredevils
HOLDING on to a piece of wire balanced perilously at 15 metres in the air was not quite my idea of good time.
Looking out to see dozens of people watching me freeze as my fear of heights gripped me was pretty awful.
But making me wear a stupid yellow hat that looked like it had been stolen from an episode of Fireman Sam was probably the ultimate humiliation.
Yet adventure holidays are all about the thrill of overcoming your fears so I had nothing to whinge about.
Attempting to conquer the high ropes during an adventure holiday in North Devon was the most scary part of my holiday.
That wasn’t to say that the other activities we took on were not high octane.
Somersaulting off a 20-foot-high rock into the crashing waves of the sea was pretty terrifying – considering I had never done it in a pool, let alone a freezing ocean, before.
Wiping out in some surprisingly ferocious waves while trying to learn to surf was pretty hair raising, too. And taking on the gravity defying overhangs on the climbing wall was enough to bring on a cold sweat.
As far as I’m concerned, Star Trek’s Captain James T Kirk was pretty wide of the mark when he said that space was the final frontier.
If I was him, I would have said: “Fear, the final frontier. These are the voyages of Paul and his girlfriend. It’s a three-day mission to explore strange new sports, to seek out new thrills and new tribulations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
Ok, that might have been hamming it up a bit for we were only visiting the north coast of Devon, after all. But there was more than a smidgin of truth to the whole fear-frontier thing.
North Devon has all you could desire when it comes to coastal adventure sports.
Why spend a small fortune going to New Zealand, where they idolise sheep, or Australia, where they idolise Ricky Ponting, when you have the same seaside adventures just three hours down the M5?
And if you are looking for the family holiday that will keep all 2.4 children happy, as well as an over-eager dad, then you’ve found it.
For nearly every exciting activity we did could be tailored for all abilities ranging from five-year-olds to 55-year-olds.
Coasteering is nothing to do with putting mats on dining tables like I imagined, but rather jumping off cliffs and scrambling along rock faces with little more than a wetsuit and life jacket for support.
And it’s certainly one to get the adrenaline pumping.
After three or four small jumps of about ten feet into the sea we climbed up to a third peak where our instructor, Russell, told us to somersault into the sea.
