Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Fubsy


Well, what an utterly fab weekend in Center Parcs! I'm still recovering and for once, it's not from a hangover!
Whinfell Forest in Penrith - what a beautiful place! Fresh air and glorious forest.

So the 8 of us girlies arrived for my big sister's hen weekend - she's done the L plates, blown up condoms and stripogram thing before so this one was to be more 'sedate', with us all older and wiser!

Great accommodation, we were in houses next door to each other. Hired bikes - bear in mind that I hadn't seriously ridden one in nearly 15 years and my feet could barely touch the ground, I was just kinda glad that I didn't have to do any sudden stops so there were no unfortunate incidents of me toppling over sideways! My aerobics classes have given me strong leg muscles so I was probably the only one who could cycle up the hills without stopping but yowch, was I saddle-sore or what!?

Ok, so I wanted to have a go at some things I'd never done before so I opted for climbing and archery.


The wall was a lot higher than I thought it would be, 10 metres (about 30 ft?) but impressing myself since I'm not too great with heights, I climbed to the top 3 times! It wasn't easy, my arms (and legs) were shaking and I only looked down twice.... Can't remember the last time I was this physically exhausted!

The archery was good - I wasn't too bad considering my arms were still rather wobbly after the climbing - hearing and seeing the arrows thud into the targets was very satisfying!

Lots of activities to choose from but they weren't cheap, although there was 'free' stuff you could do, eg cycling of course and swimming, well bathing in an indoor place that had a wave machine and some slides.

There was a good range of restaurants - first night we had an Italian - good food, poor service; second night a pub dinner - I amazed the girls with my useless general knowledge and we came 4th in the pub quiz out of 26 teams, (we didn't know what fubsy* meant...). On the last night, we had an excellent curry.

A couple of the nights, we just headed back to the house for some drinks and games - Pictionary - bloody hilarious (me and my partner won of course!) - at times, we were crying with laughter and I had a sore throat from all the laughing by the end of the night!

Managed to squeeze in a well-deserved Swedish massage, which really helped my sore muscles. Big sis didn't do any activities (unlike one girl who did 7 or 8 activities - must have cost a bomb!)but treated herself to a facial and spa session.

We didn't have great weather - got caught twice in showers but it didn't matter. Cycling around everywhere was pretty exhilarating, quite tempted to get a bike myself although nowhere I can go cycling back home...
Anyway, I would highly recommend the place - it did help that I got a discount on the accommodation from my gym membership but I would deffo come back again, with or without discount.
When I got back, rested a while, then went out for a couple of drinks and pizza at Dukes 92.
Who with, you may ask?
Ummm...I'll probably write about that another time! ;-)
* Fubsy means 'short' - how they all chortled that the 'short one' didn't get that one right in the quiz!

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:31 pm

    It sounds great. My children are always nagging me about Centerparcs (we have one about 40 mins from here) but it is so expensive cos they always want to try everything on offer!

    I found the cycling thing a bit hazardous. There were so many people who just weren't in control of their bikes at all (like you, I guess!!!!) and I was constantly being mown down or cut up!

    Sounds great though. One of the ones in the Netherlands has a dry ski slope I think - you should try that next time!

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  2. I'm wobbly on a bike RB, hate to see what I'm like on a dry slope!!

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