Monday, August 31, 2009
What I Did on My Bank Holiday by Tracy Miller
Fast forward to today. Finally time to go zorbing!
The directions seemed easy enough...take a train 35 mins outside of London, take a quick right out of the train station and walk for 10 mins...begin zorbing!
In reality, it was a bit...weirder...
They neglected to tell us that the "10 min walk" was actually up a really steep hill, in the middle of the forest, with no sidewalks...
And then we had to follow a dirt path, through the woods, in the middle of a paintball park...
And then we came upon a tent where we were greeted by a young girl with release forms for us to sign. I have to say, it didn't look that official, and it looked a wee bit sketchy. There were two other guys there at the same time as us, and we were able to watch them do a Hydro-run (where they throw water inside the zorb before you enter it) while we got ready (read: took off our shoes).
And then, our time had come...I'm not going to lie I started to feel VERY claustrophobic when I got inside the hamster ball...the inner space was much smaller than I had thought. I stepped back out of the zorb to collect myself and dove back in to get this thing over with. Literally, I had to dive in face first. Very elegantly I might add...
Once we were strapped in - we had feet and body harnesses - we were ready to go. A few deep breathes, a worried look to Brian and we were off!! And man did I scream my head off. An kept my eyes shut for 95% of it. And was completely mashed up the side of the ball while we were rolling/bouncing down the track. And then - it was over! All that for a measly 25 seconds of fun.
Brian and I looked at each other and just laughed. What a bizarre experience! We made our way back up the hill and prepared ourselves for our second trip down. I have to say, it went much smoother. We had a different hamster ball which was more comfortable and roomier inside - and I even managed to keep my screams to a minimum and my eyes open for 80% of it!! Victory!
Our zorbing package only included two trips down the hill, but we were perfectly ok with that. We watched a couple other people that had arrived after us and made our way through the sketchy woods back to the country road to head back to the train station.
The jury is still out on how we felt about zorbing...are we glad we did it? Sure, yes ok. Would we do it again? Hmm, I don't think so. Perhaps we had a spare one in our backyard, but I don't think its something we would travel outside of London to do again. But hey - variety is the spice of life...right?
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