Hayley and I decided a few weeks ago that we should treat the boys to a day out somewhere but not tell them anything about it. We settled on the Lake District and booked a session at Treetop Trek and a night at Windermere YHA staying in a Tipi.

It’s less than 2 hours drive from our home to the Treetop Trek but in that 2 hours we were probably asked 200 times where we were going and tortured by screechy YouTubers, we may have made a mistake telling the boys they could listen to what they wanted.

Christopher also decided we were going to Scotland and as I was using Google maps as a SatNav she picked up on what he’d said and re-routed us there, which was highly entertaining and not the least bit annoying…

Eventually we arrived after a quick stop to sort out the SatNav.

The Treetop Trek is located at Brockhole on Windermere.

This visitors centre has everything you expect to find at a visitors centre. They have gardens to explore, an adventure playground, archery, a cafe and you can catch a boat from the small dock and explore Lake Windermere.

We were here to swing through the trees though.

All harnessed up, safety checks done, we were ready.  We were asked who had done something like this before and as we had done ‘Go Ape’ a few years ago we said ‘us’. This promptly put us to the front of the whole group to lead…in fact it was Christopher who lead us to our fate.

(He actually did really well and made me proud, he’ll make a great leader.)

If you’ve ever been to ‘Go Ape’, or other tree climbing venues, and you loved it then you will pee yourself with excitement over Treetop Trek. It is incredible and so much better than the other places!

Not only are the challenges more challenging but you don’t have to faff about with carabiners, hooking yourself back in and out all of the time.

At Treetop Trek you’re fastened on to a system at the start and then you’re good to go. It’s slightly awkward if you’re vertically challenged, like me, because you have to sometimes pull the rope along and over runners that are on the cable that you are fastened to.

As it’s highly unlikely that you’d be doing this alone it wont be a problem because someone else can always fling it over for you.

There is a mini trek for younger or less confident participants, this one should take no longer than an hour and they also have the full trek which includes the mini trek and then goes higher and gets more difficult. The full trek shouldn’t take more than 2 hours, although it depends on your ability.

To round off the trek you get to fly down the awesome 250m zip wire, screaming like a loon!

Adrenalin well and truly rushed we thought we’d take it easy with a nice relaxing boat trip along Windermere. We enjoyed a a glass of Prosecco in the rain (the boys had crisps) and we entertained ourselves below deck with some table football and eye-spy.

We stopped for chips at Bowness-on-Windermere and then caught a boat back to Brockhole, then we made our way up to the YHA at Windermere, our accommodation for the night.

We checked in and had a little explore around our digs. We’d booked a Tipi to make it more adventurous for the boys but I think we were more excited about it than them. The Tipi was basic but comfortable. It’s certainly not what people refer to as glamping, you’ll need something fancier for that. It comprised of a single mattress each with duvets and pillows, a chest for your valuables and lanterns for those midnight trips to the toilet.

We loved it, it was snuggly and fun ♥

Usually at the YHA they have a good menu for evening meals but this one lacked selection so we dragged the children out for a walk to find somewhere to eat and we came across Pedros.

Pedro’s is a tapas restaurant and it was rather yummy. We had pizzas, garlic bread, burgers, quesadillas and soon found that we were over faced, so we requested a doggy bag and slowly made our way back up to our Tipi.

We’d had a long, tiring, fun-filled day and by 7:30pm we were all officially wiped, so we got snuggled up in bed ready to see what tomorrow would bring.

(Day Two is here.)