Have you ever wanted to book a trip and just go?
Follow up question have you ever actually gone on the trip?
If your answer is no I get it. I have always wanted travel and have an adventure in other countries but I’ve never had the courage to do it alone. So when presented with the opportunity to travel to England with one of my favorite professors and a few of my friends, I finally had to courage to take the steps to have my adventure. We traveled to Manchester, York, Canterbury, Hampton Court, and London in the span of eight days. I could write about the beautiful works of art at the Manchester Art Gallery, the quirkiness of the Shambles in York, the architect of the Canterbury cathedral, or the elegance featured at Hampton Court. But I won’t subject you to that, I am going to tell you about my adventure that had in my free time.
Some background is needed to understand why my adventure was an amazing experience to me but may bore others to death. I enjoy many things but when I looked at schools I looked for a good History department and a climbing wall. Many don’t know much about rock climbing and that’s okay. To help you understand what it means to me, think about how people go to the gym to work out and they have a routine during the week. Rock climbing is my form of going to the gym to work out, I climb maybe four times a week and stay for about 2 hours each time. So when I realized we had basically a full day free to do whatever we wanted I knew what I was doing. I took the tube from Wembley Park to Manor House and headed to the castle climbing centre. The centre was massive it was interesting to see how the exterior of the building which was a magnificent castle blended with the interior of a modern climbing gym. The pictures speak for themselves.
I had a great time climbing and being around genuinely nice people that were willing to answer my questions. I got experience climbing in a way I had never done it before, there were four flours filled with climbing areas, a cafe, a shop filled with climbing gear, and an outside garden that had another wall. I met amazing people that were from all over the world. I got to try climbing using a different rating system. I climbed til my body physically couldn’t anymore and I didn’t mind the soreness because I spent most of my day doing what I loved in an amazing country. My adventure may seem small and that’s, I did something that I wanted to do completely on my own and for me that’s huge.
Written by: Lyndsey Tapley