Simons despatch: Byron Bay

'Chill out under sunny blue skies in Byron bay' the LP promised us. Sounded good so off we toddled from Sydney to Byron on a 12 hour train ride.... to be greeted by rain!

Luckily not the British, all day, kind of rain but more the tropical, big cloud with vertical rain for 5 mins then nice for awhile, kind.

Byron Bay is a very artistic, musical, hippie, surf centric place and we stayed at the musical epicentre - the Arts Factory. This is a hostel just out the back of Byron that has a festival atmosphere with lots of live music in the evening and people sitting around strumming, singing and playing drums during the day. There's also didgeridoo making and it's got its own recording studio!

The first night we stayed in a teepee which was novel but cold, before moving to an island retreat, that was a canvas safari tent with double bed and veranda looking out over a little lake. Bonza!

I think Beth was looking forward to a nice chilled out time whilst I wanted a little excitement after the long train journey. On reflection I think we achieved a pretty good balance - leisurely mornings followed by something exciting, then time spent with drinks and crisps to help Beth recover from the exciting activity.

Day 1 activity was the obligatory surfing and body boarding in up to 8ft waves which we both enjoyed & despite their power, I only suffered a small sprained shoulder.

Day 2 was flying trapeze, not ideal with a sprained shoulder but I really wanted to try it and figured that if I could still do a pull up then I'd be fine on what i thought would be a 'watered down tourist trapeze experience'. I was very wrong about it being watered down but luckily adrenaline meant my shoulder didn't ever reach my consciousness!

We started off on the ground level trapeze, where I expected to spend most of the lesson. After quickly demonstrating we could hook our knees over the bar and let go with our hands they stuck a belt round our waists and said "right, now just do that up on the full rig whilst swinging"!?!?

To say we were a little shocked at our rapid progression would be an understatement. Looking up to the platform, a good 15m above us with just a bouncy aluminium ladder leading up to it was fairly intimidating. Unfortunately being in a group of 4 girls and myself I couldn't really refuse the offer to go first.

Now before mum passes out with worry I should point out that we were clipped in throughout so couldn't actually hit the floor. Although being used to a full climbing harness, just having a thick belt round your waist felt a little insecure.

After climbing the progressively bouncy ladder I got to the platform and made the mistake of looking down at the tiny people below me and the flimsy looking safety net I was about to rely on. I won't lie my palms were a little sweaty.

I was clipped into the two safety lines then the assistant hooked the trapeze bar towards me & said "take it with your right hand". As my left hand was securely holding the scaffolding this wasn't a problem even though I had to lean out a long way to reach it.

The problem came when she said "now move your left hand onto the bar too". I knew that if I let go of the scaffolding I was definitely going to fall, the trapeze bar is really far out to stop you hitting the platform on your return swing. I could feel she had hold of my belt to try to stop me falling forwards but she was only about 5'5"!

After a quick bit of panicky rationalising I convinced myself it must work otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to run the course every week and let go of the scaffolding....

Turns out she could probably beat me in an arm wrestle & had no problem stopping me from falling forward while I got my left hand to the bar. Then she shouted "3, 2, 1 hup!" and I jumped out into the abyss.

The swing was fairly easy to hold, not much g force but all of a sudden I was at the apex of the swing & the coach yelled "legs up". Hooking my knees onto the bar took half the backswing then, with my head dangling, before i had time to think much more than 'I hope my legs don't slip' I reached the apex of the backswing and heard "hands off". With unquestioning obedience I let go of the bar and with a fair amount of relief didn't plummet head first into the net... Trick nailed! :)

The dismount was still the elephant in the room as having returned to a normal hanging position I was still swinging high above the net with no idea what landing in it was going to feel like. But with no other options I did as instructed and let go on the start of a backswing to 'sit' into the net. Surprisingly I don't remember having much of a feeling of plummeting, just a memory of the nice comforting embrace of the net, letting me know I'd survived... it was awesome!

Having nailed first go what I thought would be the only trick they could get beginners to do, I felt a little disappointed, but I shouldn't have worried. Next they wanted us to do a backflip on the dismount and then once we'd mastered that, for the grand finale a catch!

Yup that's right they wanted us to flip upside down and then catch the hands of an assistant swinging on the opposite trapeze before letting go with our legs and transferring to both hang under the other bar... Proper circus trick!

Now I hadn't noticed any muscle bound men strolling around who'd be able to hold my weight whilst dangling upside down so my palms started sweating again. Instead the woman who'd been holding us on the platform swung down and climbed up to the other trapeze.

Well I was wrong to doubt her strength the first time so I decided to have more faith this time. As I stood balanced on the platform contemplating the drop for the 4th time I still didn't know if I'd go for the transfer, it just felt a bit ridiculous really. An hour ago I'd only ever played on an orange plastic trapeze on a friends climbing frame, now I was about to attempt to be caught 15m up by a woman who seemed only two thirds my size?!?!

"3, 2, 1, hup!" in reality there was no time to worry once I'd taken the leap, just legs up, hands off, arch back, hands out, grip of iron as she grabbed my wrists - grip of iron returned as I gripped hers! Then release legs and magic! I'd done it! She didn't even seem to be straining that much (which was a good job as she had to do it 9 more times as we all got 2 goes).

As I dropped, triumphant, into the net I realised a whole new door had opened to me, I could run off & join the circus! However, weighing up the low wage, high risk of injury and lack of subsidised coffee I think I'll stick with programming!

After a slightly stilted start getting her left hand onto the bar, Beth managed all the tricks too, even getting her legs over the bar in one graceful movement which none of the rest of us managed.

However, the trauma of the initial swing stayed with her so remedial action was taken with the liberal application of crisps and beer until a less wide eyed Bethan conceded that "I'm glad I've done it but mainly so I'll never have to do it again!".

Day 3 was paddle boarding. Essentially an oversized surf board you stand on and paddle around with an oar. The guy renting it to us did mention something about people normally trying it on a lake first, but that sounded boring so we hit the beach again.

The waves were only hitting about 5-6 feet at most but it turns out paddle boarding is a lot harder than surfing. Still good fun though! In the end I managed to catch 2 goods waves in, only loosing a small amount of my back skin in the many attempts. While Beth stayed injury free but still required the swiftly becoming traditional beers and crisps to recover after a particularly big wave caught her side on.

All in all great fun! :)