Masts

2005-08-07

Last week was a mast course in Taunton. This covered useful things like how to climb a mast safely, how to not fall off masts, how to make sure you don't fall a long way off a mast if you do fall off, and how to rescue someone that falls a little way off a mast without falling off yourself.

Up a pylon

Initially climbing up things was a tiny bit scary, gravity being the force that always wins and steel being very thin. Eventually I became used to the height, figured out the easy ways of using the clips and lanyards, and started to enjoy the view a little bit.

Rescuing Buffy

Preparing to rescue Buffy

Rescuing Buffy Again

The last day, for a bit of fun and pain, we climbed up a 62m tower. Rewarded with fantastic views of Taunton, along with proof that something good lies beyond the end of the town. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, we took up a collection of paper planes. All but one got out of the car park, with some going quite a long way indeed.

Beneath the Mast

The View

The Drop

Exhausting Climbing (Julius)

Exhausting Climbing (Kirsty)

The Ladder

Airplanes

Those Arrays are On

To fill the evenings, we enjoyed the limited delights of Taunton. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory turned out to be very good (although WW was a teeny bit too Jackson, and Mike TV entirely annoying for absolutely the wrong reasons), we found one or two nice pubs in the town, ate lots of steaks for dinner, got chased by cows while trying to find another pub (followed by an undignified field exit over a fence), and went for an adventure filled trip to Lyme-Regis -- complete with daring leaps up sea defences, penetrating deep forests of brambles, clambering up pipes, cutting through allotments then descending to the sea along a recently created land slide. All good fun, of course.

Walk

Mudslid Bunker