Live Slowly. Die Old. Thrills & Spills

Here is the episode I know some of you have been waiting patiently for. The one with the sledding.

Sadly, my initial run – on an inflatable tube – was not caught on camera. I was too keen to launch myself down the hill to be faffing around with taking a video, which is a bit of a shame.  It was a blur of noise, of nearly running in to a group of kids and of ending up in the car park at the bottom to a shout of “You OK?!” Thankfully I was completely unharmed.

We do, however, have some video highlights from the afternoon.  Let’s start with one of my first runs on the plastic sled…

As you can see, I was possibly taking the “live slow” part a little too seriously at this point.  Nonetheless, I persevered. I was particularly keen to hit the jump after Chris had managed to (accidentally) clear it backwards…

Finally, I hit it! It may not look that dramatic from this angle, but I was quite surprised by how much I did actually leave the ground.  I was even more surprised that I stayed on my sled (a feeling you may share when you see one of the more seasoned sledders come down behind me).

There was also the opportunity for a bit of bromance…

The British sledding team demonstrated some prowess…

Even Patrick was caught on camera screaming like a girl.

Finally, sledding wouldn’t be sledding without some war wounds.  The big smash of the afternoon occurred after we tried to link some sleds together, and the Christmas trees placed at the bottom didn’t shield us well from the rocks.  This was not a good time for me to recall my biology teacher telling the class that if you hit your back in the right place you can rupture your spleen and die; I think my initial words were “I think I’ve pulverised my internal organs.”   The last word comes from Chris Hinde…