However much I complain about the layers of bureaucracy that I’ve had to wade through on France, I must say that I am pleasantly surprised by the super relaxed liability requirements.

On Saturday, my friend and I went adventuring (quite literally) in an adventure park whose website is aventure-aventure.fr. Lots of adventure indeed.

An adventure park has different routes through the trees that consist of challenges such as balancing on a log or a set of swinging steps (like a bunch of trapezes in a line) in order to get from platform to platform. I didn’t take any pictures while we were there, but I found a pretty good picture online of a different park that helps explain the setup.

Typical Setup
Typical Setup

Adventurers wear a harness that has two short cords attached to it with karabiners on the end of each cord. The main rule is that at least one karabiner must be attached to a safety cord at all times, but other than that people are free to explore and go through the different challenges at their will. It’s awesome.

We started the day on the intermediate course, then moved on to the difficult and finally the impossible one. I admit I had to cheat once because I couldn’t handle the monkey bars, so I attached my pulley and ziplined to the next platform because I didn’t want to get stuck in the middle. I was disappointed until my friend went behind me without cheating and then did actually get stuck. But I made through the suspended rings and cargo nets and tarzan jumps and wobbly suspended wooden platforms.

I did have another little hiccup when I missed the cargo net on my first tarzan jump. These jumps involve swinging on a rope and catching a net on the other side, and the first time I tried I didn’t get a good grip on the net and ended up swinging back towards the other platform, but didn’t make it so I was just chillin in the middle between two platforms hanging from a rope for a while. Luckily my friend was behind me and he was eventually able to pull me up and give me enough momentum to get to the other side. Much better than the time I did an adventure park with my cousins five years ago and got stuck in the middle until someone walked by and was able to grab an employee to let me down. Super embarrassing.