Although there's plenty for the Kids to do here in Carmarthenshire, We recently decided to finish the tree-house that we built when we first moved in.
We had been thinking of the safest way for the Children to Get up to the Tree-house and after much discussion we opted for a Cargo net. We popped over to the local 'Army Surplus' store to see if we could get one but with no success.
They informed us that they weren't allowed to sell them anymore as they were dangerous. :(
The next day we nipped to our local tool shop to pick up some supplies for the Business. We got talking to the Tool store owner and mentioned that we were after a cargo/scramble net. The owner sent one of His Minions into the stockroom and he came back our with SEVEN, two metre square Cargo Nets that a previous customer had ordered in and never collected.
After a heap of bartering he agreed to sell all seven to us for £50.00. BARGAIN!
Let construction Begin.
The first thing we did was to Bind two of the nets together to make them long enough to reach the platform on the tree-house without there being too much of a difficult climb to the top.
We then worked out how to connect the net to the ground. We drove two stakes into the earth and stretched the loops from the net over them, harnessed the sides in the centre of the net to the branches above and fixed the netting at the deck with a good piece of 2x4.
We repeated this whole process on the next side of the platform to give the kids two means of access.
Next on the agenda was the lazy adults and babies hammock, this was placed under the tree-house, tied securely using the legendary blue nylon rope which we have used in the family for years.
On to the Beams.
For David's Birthday last year, Elaine got him a Gibbon Slack-line.
This is pretty much a very strong and long Ratchet strap. (like the ones used to secure items to Ones 'roof rack'). This requires a VERY sturdy strut at each end. Point 'A' was easy as it is a very old tree, but we came across problems with Point 'B'. We had a 5 ft piece of old telegraph pole laying around so we used this for point 'B'. After a hell of a lot of elbow grease we managed to sink it into the ground far enough for the horizontal resistance to be high enough to support the weight of a small child.
We also set up a few 'Bench beams'. These were a very simple structure, built by hammering two old gate posts about 6ft apart and then nailing an old pole across the top of them. We made two of these in total. one at 1.5ft high and one at roughly 2.5ft high, These can also be used as seats.
JUMP.
The last thing we built was the tyre/pole swing. This is a good piece of climbing rope suspended up high with a long piece of plumbers piping over it and a tyre on the end to act as a seat or to cushion the landing. if swinging from the decking.
That's the Adventure playground completed, the new features make excellent additions to the swings and trampoline that were there before.
Thanks for reading.
Adam
