Posts Tagged ‘zorbing’
Jersey has plenty to offer extreme sports fans
This is Cut Across Shorty a VS 4c climb, courtesy of The Jersey Rock Climbing Club:
I was going to tackle the British Isles as a group, but Jersey has so much to offer – great climbing, surfing and scuba diving to name just a few of the recommended activities, that I am going to go no further than this jewel of an island where a weekend full of action is waiting for anyone looking for a variety of extreme sports in one small area.
Climbing is a great way to get a body workout, while at the same time challenging your mind, and Jersey has a wide selection for you. The island has some of the best climbing areas in Europe and the variety of rock and unspoilt scenery make it a spectacular experience for beginners and experienced climbers alike.
It’s an ideal place to visit: perfect days, un-crowded cliffs and great climbing, regular dips in the sea to cool off and great pubs to retire to at the end of the day.
From the impressive 50m tower of The Pinnacle to the extensive and confusing buttresses of Grosnes, through the delightful ‘mini-cliffs’ at Corbiere and out to the north coast, there really is plenty here to keep you busy. Homesick Angle on The Pinnacle is one the the best HVS (hard very severe) routes you could possibly hope for.
All the routes on the island (there are 1100 listed in the book) are trad and most of them are on high quality granite. The island has long been a bolt-free zone – the local climbing club originally had just two rules for the members – abide by the Country Code, and no fixed protection!
If you want to arm yourself in advance with some useful information, ‘Jersey Climbs’ is the first guidebook to be produced for Jersey in twelve years. It has 188 pages with lists, grades, advice and details of the 1100 routes to be found there.
And then there’s the surfing…
Jersey’s shores are bombarded by waves and not only are they some of the best waves in the British Isles but they are also some of the warmest… always worth bearing in mind.
And there are great scuba diving opportunities here too, whether you want to investigate an old wreck or float amongst black faced pennies, corals and luminous jewel anemones in pinks, blues, greens and oranges. The summer months are even more interesting when the warm waters bring in exotic marine wildlife such as sea horses, dolphins and basking sharks. Jersey’s coastal seawater is of award-winning cleanliness and this is reflected in the abundance of sea life to be found there.
Other things you can do in Jersey besides rock climbing, abseiling and surfing are BloKarting on the beach, Sea Kayaking, Caving, Coasteering, Clay Pigeon Shooting, Cycling, Golf, Powerboat Trips, Fishing Excursions, Horse Riding and Zorbing. I’ve probably missed some out.
Not just a banking paradise then…
Don't know what to do this weekend?
How some extreme sports’ enthusiasts spend their weekends…
[youtube=]
Extreme Zorbing coming to the Massachussets
They’re lining up to do it in Slovenia, it’s all the rage in Los Cabos and they can’t get enough of it in the Smoky Mountains.
It’s called zorbing or sphereing, and on July 12 you can get a look at the latest in extreme sports at the Amesbury Sports Park. Amesbury riders will get the chance to go OGOing, or spinning down a slope in an outdoor gravity orb, an American edition of the Zorb which launched back in 1993 when two New Zealand guys who apparently had gads of free time decided they wanted to walk on water.
Dwayne van der Sluis and Andrew Akers created a transparent inflatable ball with an inside compartment for a rider who did, in fact, walk on waves. But the inventors discovered soon enough it was more fun to roll down a hill than slosh across a pond. Zorbing was born.
“It’s really a wild ride,” says Bob Ramshaw, a spokesman for Amesbury Sport Park. “All you see while you’re rolling down is ground and sky. It’s a lot of fun.”
Amesbury Sports Park will offer two types of OGO rides. The first calls for being strapped into a harness inside the ball and rolling head-over-heels down an 800-foot-long track designed especially for the ride.
The second is a water ball or, as Ramshaw likes to call it, the H2O OGO.
“You get in and we throw five gallons of water in with you,” says Ramshaw. “You slip and slide inside as you roll down.”
Chris Roberts, CEO of Outdoor Gravity Inc., the company that partnered with Amesbury Sports Park to bring OGOs to the area, says being in the water ball is like being in a washing machine and on a roller coaster at the same time. And honestly, who wouldn’t welcome that?
While a grand opening is always a lot of work, Ramshaw has been particularly busy this week assuring potential OGOers that the ride is safe. Last weekend, a reporter in Maine took a test ride in a Zorb set up by another company, Zorb New England. The ball struck a hay-encased pole and went airborne before coming down for a hard landing.
Rebecca Meltzer fractured her back and injured a kidney. State officials are now investigating the accident.
The Amesbury Sports Park had originally been working with Zorb New England, but the park broke off the deal last month after learning the history of the company’s owner, Barry Billcliff. A couple of years back, Billcliff and several other men claimed to have dug up more than $700,000 in old money in a backyard in Methuen. Police later charged them with stealing the bills from a Newbury barn where they had been working to repair the roof.
Although the charges were eventually dropped, Amesbury Sports Park, which has been careful to cultivate its reputation as a family destination, broke off its relationship with Zorb New England.
But close one door and another one usually blows open. Soon after Zorb New England left the stage, the sports park began working with Roberts, who has spent a couple of years with the original New Zealand company creating a Zorb Park in Tennessee.
“We’re grateful for his history and expertise,” says Ramshaw, who adds that Roberts is a mechanical engineer with lots of experience with the product. Roberts designed and patented the OGOs, which are now ready to roll in Amesbury.
Ramshaw says the OGOs travel about 20 to 23 mph down a track constructed specifically for the ride.
“We have sports turf on our track which has been professionally designed,” says Ramshaw. “This has all been professionally engineered by someone who worked with the actual inventors.”
Individual rides are $15; $40 for a package of three. The Park will be offering coupons and packages that combine OGO ride tickets with passes for their other big attraction, summer tubing. Go to www.amesburysportspark.net.
Thanks to Barbara Taormina and the MetroWest Daily News for bringing my attention to this story.
Zorbing! Yes it looks kind of funny and it is!
3 Comments »
Zorb rolls into trouble
Executives of a New Zealand company carving out a global niche in extreme sports, say they were investigating alleged piracy of their trademark before a counterfeit Zorb broke the back of an American newspaper reporter.
Public safety officials in west-central Maine said they are investigating the injury to Sun Journal reporter Rebekah Metzler when she tumbled in an inflatable sphere – claimed to be a Zorb – down a 213m hill during a media preview.
Metzler fractured her back and injured a kidney when the sphere struck a post at Lost Valley Ski Resort.
State officials said the promoter of the device, Zorb New England, was operating without a permit, the Sun Journal reported.
Zorb Ltd chief executive, Craig Horrocks, of Remuera, Auckland, told the Boston Globe that his company has had issues with “a rogue and fake operators.”
He said the only official Zorb site in the USA was in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, near Dolly Parton’s theme park.
Zorb New England co-manager Jeremy Coito acknowledged that his business base in Danvile New Hampshire was not associated with Zorb Ltd, but claimed that “Zorbing is a generic trademark, a sport” and he could rightfully use its name.
But Sosia Zerboni, the group capital projects manager from Zorb Ltd’s Auckland headquarters, said the New Zealand company found out last week about Zorb New England and had already asked its lawyers to go after the group, before Metzler was hurt.
Zorbs have been gaining recognition outside New Zealand in the past few years, fuelled by feature spots on TV shows such as Amazing Race and The Today Show.
The Zorb ball was invented by computer programmer Dwane van der Sluis and musician Andrew Akers as a durable double-skinned sphere in which passengers can either be suspended with nine straps to keep the rider in place, or a “‘hydro” sphere without a harness can have water sloshing around the riders.
Mr Horrocks – who joined the pair as a part owner and now owns over 800,000 of the company’s 2.8 million shares – said the inventors had pumped all their savings into a New Zealand patent.
Rather than taking out expensive patents in other countries at an estimated cost of $1 million, he put the company on the trademark path in about 16 countries.
Instead of preventing copies, Zorb concentrates on stopping others using the word “Zorb” or to describe the activity as “Zorbing”.
Mr Horrocks said in a statement to the Sun Journal: “Unfortunately, as you are now aware, the (Lost Valley) operators had bought a fake device. ‘Zorb New England’ is an operation that has stolen our name.”
Just so you know what we’re talking about I’ve included a short video on what should happen when and if you go zorbing – certainly looks fun to me but, like many of the sports we report on, if it is not practiced with due care and attention there can be problems. Let us hope that Rebekah makes a full recovery.
1 Comment »
Zorbing or is it absorbing?
check this out guys, not sure whether you could call it a sport but it is certainly extreme
not sure whether Jacky was on board, despite the sound effects, but if he was – respect !