Zip lining and bar crawling

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Today we were going zip lining which was one of the things I was most looking forward to doing. We started the day with a good breakfast with a lot choices available. As we were about to leave Grant announced that Jack would not be going because he thought that he would be too heavy for the zip lining, I was certain this was not the case as I would not have booked it for him if he could not go on it. On the way we got stuck in a traffic jam as there were some roadworks going on meaning I had to call ahead to let the guides know that we were going to be late, thankfully we were the only group completing the course that day and they were fine with waiting. Once we got through the roadworks Harv floored the car and we got there at 9:15 which was pretty good going considering I thought we were going to be about half an hour late.



When we arrived at Arbortrek we had a laugh with the receptionist as we were clearly all under dressed for how cold it was going to get and we all had to borrow a coat. Naturally my coat was way too big for me but they did not have anything smaller available so I looked pretty ridiculous! When we were all weighed (it turned out Jake was the heaviest of all of us) we asked what the weight limit was and Jack would have been able to do it which confirmed what I had already thought. The 2 guides who would be taking us on the zip line were really good and it was clear that they really loved their job! After getting kitted out with the gear we had to complete a little training course first to learn all the signals that the guides would be using on the zip lines, we were also going to be braking with our hands which was something I had not done before.



It was a 10 minute drive to the start of the course and the scenery was absolutely amazing, the guides said we were lucky that we had not been doing this 2 days previously as they had to cancel a couple of groups because of the weather. The zip lines themselves were absolutely incredible and I was going at some really quick speeds, the whole experience was brilliant and would recommend this to anyone. As I weighed the least I was the only one who actually never needed to break and in fact I was advised to try and build up my speed so that I would make it to the landing pad when the line started to go back up! As well as the zip lines we got to cross some really high bridges and try our hands at some rapelling which was also really good. Every time another person went to rapell down one of the guides would shout 'transfer' which is something that we all continue to say for the rest of the holiday! The guides told us a lot about the area and advised that if we loved beer we needed to go to Burlington as there were a lot of breweries there that we needed to try out. All too soon the zip lining was over but as we were going around one of the guides was taking photos and they were uploaded to facebook and Grant had taken a lot of footage on his Go Pro. Stupidly I forgot the head band for mine so I could not use it.

We headed back to the hotel and picked up Jack and then went straight on to Burlington from there which was about an hour drive from Stowe. Luckily the turn off we needed for Burlington came just before we were about to hit a massive traffic jam. Burlington was a picturesque town and considering it was one of the biggest places in Vermont was actually quite small. We started off by heading into the farmhouse bar and grill where I made the mistake of not ordering enough food and settled for a tray of chips, something I would later regret. I ordered a great named beer called 'its complicated being a wizard' which turned out to be nearly 9% and then had another beer in there which was of a similar percentage. Our next stop was the Vermont Pub and Brewery which was somewhere that I had already read about as being highly recommended. The beer in there was also very good and once again a very high percentage which I was starting to feel was really hitting me! I found a map in the pub which detailed the location of all the breweries in the town, of which there were many, and it was on this map Grant and Jake discovered that the Zero Gravity brewery was just down the road. Harv was able to get free cokes in all the places we went into because he was the designated driver which I though was a nice touch. As had been the case all day the Zero Gravity beer was also extremely potent and I was really struggling by the time I finished that beer.



I fell asleep in the car on the way back (you could call it passing out!) which sped up the journey home but when we got back to the hotel I did not feel well for it at all. As a result we all took a break for a couple of hours and I had a shower before heading out for something to eat. Jake had seen a burger place to the left of the hotel that he wanted to try out but unfortunately it was closed so we had to carry on up the road to find something else. It was extremely cold so we went to into the first place that we saw which was called Charlie B's which is somewhere I would definitely not recommend anyone go into. The service was really poor and we were treated as if were an inconvenience rather than paying customers. I also ordered a coke and ended up getting a stout which I really did not want so rather than hanging around for food in there we finished our drinks and left. Harv decided he would leave a very scathing review on trip advisor. Across the road there was a place called Ideltyme which was somewhere that I had ready online as a really good brewery so we though we would try the food in there. As it turns out the food was excellent everyone was really happy with burger and my beef was superb. The beer was also excellent as well according to everyone else, I did not have one as I was still feeling pretty bad from earlier. We stayed in there the whole night as it was a really nice place and the manager who worked in there was pretty hot as well. The waiter suggested that she would give us all a lift to the next pub, the manager did not look like she was too keen on that idea, but in the end we all decided to head back to the hotel rather than stay out.

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