The inner ape

I went ape last Sunday, with my dad and Tim, and my mum following along on the ground. We clipped on our harnesses, and braved a torrential downpour to scramble and totter around the treetop agility course. The rain made it seem more like we were in a rainforest than a tame British woodland, and we had the course to ourselves, partly due to the rain and to the thunder and lightening which kept people off course due to safety restrictions. In retrospect, I can recall crouching in a whimpering heap on more than one of the platforms, saying things along the lines of "I can't do it" and "I want to go home", but the stomach-churning terror seems distant now. All that remains is pride that I managed the whole course, including the "extreme" rated tarzan swing which flung me in a tangled heap into a cargo net, from which I had to extract myself and then crawl painfully slowly to the top.

We visited Tom and Emily and their rats in the afternoon, and finally we managed to visit Royston cave, an underground cavern used and beautifully carved by the Knights Templar, a shadowy religious group, in the 13th century. It was extraordinarily lovely, and very sad that there are not enough funds to preserve it well, so the soft chalk relief carvings are degrading rapidly.

Exmouth

My parents and I spent the early part of the week visiting my favourite aunt and uncle in Exmouth. On the way there, we stopped off to visit the stone circles at Stanton Drew. They are quite well-preserved, with impressively large stones, but instead of being mobbed by tourists, they share a large field with some sheep and cows. One of the sheep was using a stone as a scratching post.

On Tuesday I swam in the sea, and it was very cold. We walked on the beach, picking up shells and stones with holes in them, and my mum had picked up some bubble mixture from the car, and was trailing huge streams of iridescent, multi-coloured bubbles behind her in the strong wind. We visited the gorgeous National Trust garden at Knightshayes in the afternoon: I loved the huge walled veggie patch with many scarecrows (including a diver launching himself into the strawberries); the thickets of tall, waving Japanese anemones (windflowers); and the woods and pastures of the huge estate around the house.

We came across a cat following a toddler and his dad in the grounds, and stopped to pet the cat, a regal-looking black and white creature. The toddler, seeing us stroking the cat, came to join in too and asked what his name was. My aunt asked the toddler what he thought it should be, and after a short pause, he came up with "Tree Trunk". I think that must be the most awesome name for a cat ever.