Four rather intrepid (or foolish!) members of the district Network decided that this year we would take part in the Apex Challenge a night time multi-activity event.
If you really want to you can have a look at how we did here if not and because I managed to cock up posting my own report and in the process delete it you can read katies version of the event below...
I thought I'd get my report of the Apex Challenge in before Chris does... I can do this because I'm not working today (except deliveries) and he lost all his writing yesterday by pressing the wrong button, so I can get there first! Tee hee!!
So the Challenge. I think it was a challenge in itself getting to Nottingham without killing Lee. I think he had made it his mission to try and annoy me - it worked.
Upon arrival we pitched our tents fairly quickly and had quite a wait til we got our packs and could set off. Did have a quick look round when we got the map - just so we had an idea where to go ;)
We set off walking fairly fast, 6 hours to complete as much of the course as possible, which included bases, worth 50 points each, and checkpoints, which varied from 5 to 30 points. We were soon overtaken by Bradley Woods team in full army combats, and running. We managed to wander around trying to find the first checkpoint.
The first base we hit was a rope course maze "On the ropes". We did this in about 5 minutes, but to be honest, the people running the base didn't even watch to see if we did this one.
The next base we arrived at had a warning - are you allergic to bee/wasp/hornet stings, nettles, spiders, snakes, slime?? You had to put your hand in a closed box and find a plastic card. It was gross. The organiser made me swap places with John, and I had to put my hand in a box of lug worms and crickets!!!! Lee's box had maggots in. John's had some gritty soap thing and Chris had a box of leaves! I definitely drew the short straw.
Third base was mountain biking round a track in the forest (in the dark!!) and back up to the site, collecting morse code along the way. At this point, I should have said I was unable to participate, but I didn't want to lose 50 points for the team, so I had a go and completely knackered my hip, because of my arthritis. This caused problems later on as I was holding the team back a bit. I was really gutted about it, aside from being in a hell of a lot of pain.
Trying to avoid the chasers was a hard part of the night. These were teams of leaders (in reflective jackets) who would knock off 25 points if they caught you. We got caught once, because John's bag had a reflective strip, which none of us noticed. We were pretty gutted at this point, so spent a lot of the night crawling around in the dark, torches out, silent, because we thought there may be a chaser near by... crazy!
After a number of tablets and some Ibuprofen gel on my hip, I decided to have a go on the "Big Bounce". A hula hoop held 5foot in the air in the middle of a bouncy castle. Each team member had to jump through the hoop without touching the hoop. Our team did this really quickly too, because we helped push each other through - ace team work!!
Base N "Piece by Piece" was two of my mates from the Gathering's base. A lego tower which I had to describe to the other three who had to put it together exactly without seeing it. We did ace on this too... Just too good!!
"Wet Wangers" was a catapult which Chris loaded to fire over a wall to Lee... managed to do this without breaking the catapult, like one team!!
The final base "Good grasp" was a rope course over to a tree where the whole team were supposed to go across. This was changed to two members. Chris had a go but managed to fall off three times. Lee did it twice instead. Which left us pretty short for time, with about eight minutes to run to the checkpoint we knew was situated by the toilets, and back to camp, with three minutes to spare!
We got in at 2:26 and stayed up with a can of coke and whiskey, only til about 4am as we were knackered!
Lovely bacon sarnie for breakfast, tents down and in the car before the presentations. We came 11th out of 14. So at least not last!! It was great fun though and we all want to do the next one. All four of us are aching today.
