schlackman.org

On Friday, the DCGS IT team, plus a few extras, were led across the country on our mystery team-building exercise. Only the drivers and managers in the group were privy to the information of what we were actually doing. The only information we lackeys had been given was the following:

After leaving at the appointed hour, there followed a trek down the M25 and M3. As we neared, we realised that we were passing an awful lot of signs for Birdworld, eventually culminating in driving right up to the entrance. Our driver Steve started to wind Mat up by putting his indicator on as we approached the turning, to which Mat exclaimed “It is Birdworld!”, only to fall back into his seat dejected when we drove straight past.

Instead, we ended up at a place called Go Ape, for what can be best described as a high-wire assault course. Of course, this had some implications which I felt were necessary to disclose to our team leader:

Me: “Janet, would this be a bad time to tell you that I’m scared of heights?”
Janet: “Yes.”

As it turns out, I’m not actually scared of heights, as I had though when getting very dizzy on top of an Army assault course scramble net several years ago. At the time I had attributed this to nearly dying aged 11 when I fell 6 feet out of a tree. However, it seems that I am in fact scared not of heights but of falling, so once strapped into the compulsory safety harness I was in fact one of the least worried people there. Mat got knackered and wimped out after the first 3 courses, but this was in fact an advantage to the rest of us as he spent to rest of the afternoon shooting photos, mostly of me looking cool:

Complete Photo Set by Mat

All said it was pretty good, especially considering we’d been expecting some kind of outdoor orienteering exercise in the rain (which luckily held off until just after we left). I later discovered there’s a centre very near Reading in Bracknell – I sense a possible birthday outing in the making.