The Team
Vid Blakeney
Vid's background includes completing a contract with the Spanish Foreign Legion, 3 years as a full time Fire-fighter, an apprenticeship in welding, several years in the construction and engineering industries. He has spent 12 years working in outdoor pursuits. He is a qualified canoe coach, climbing instructor and mountain leader. He has instructed on many high ropes courses and has been involved in training hundreds of staff in their use. He has also worked as a resources Manager for several of the major UK outdoor providers buying ropes courses from many of the other UK suppliers. For the last 6 years he has been the Development Manager for Rope Course Construction which has involved him in the construction of dozens of Ropes Courses and Adventure Constructions and he has inspected hundreds of installations. He is a Type C inspector.
Jill
Shortly after qualifying as a Renal Nurse Jill took a summer break working at an outdoor centre in France running the office and taking care of first aid. The next year she was appointed as Centre Manager which was the start of a busy career in outdoor pursuits. Over the last ten years she has travelled all over the world leading expeditions, working as an medic on river expeditions and high altitude projects. Along the way she has attended Tropical medicine courses and is a qualified L3 canoe coach and Mountain Leader. She is in charge of the Head Office team whilst looking after her 3 young sons.
Craig Palmer
Craig Palmer an former Royal Marine Commando who has over 18 years of outdoor leadership experience gained from both active service in the Royal Marines and within the outdoor leisure industry. He has extensive qualifications in both mountain (MIA) and water activities to a very high standard and is an acknowledged expert in mountaineering – he is also active member of Penrith Mountain Rescue Team and is a former fell top assessor who's job it is to provide winter snow and ice condition reports on Helvellyn for Weatherline on behalf of the Lake District National Park. Craig has been working with/for Rope Course for several years now specialising in arboreal work for our tree installations and acts as out Training Manager and Technical Expert.
Associates
Paul Capper
Paul is one of only 2 European Ropes Course Association Type A Inspectors in the world. In brief ERCA uses a tiered system of inspectors which is designed to create impartiality. Type C’s can inspect, maintain and build Ropes Courses, Type B’s can inspect and maintain and Type A’s can only inspect – and must be used for the EN 15567 inaugural inspection required on all new builds since August 2009.
Paul started out helping to build courses when the Rope Course industry was in it’s infancy and has been on, around and associated with Ropes Courses ever since.
Bruce Hatton
Bruce does all our arboreal inspections and makes all the necessary calculations to ensure that any trees that we might use are up to the task. We use his services because Bruce is a registered Consultant and a Fellow of the Arboricultural Association and a Professional Member and Chartered Arboriculturalist with the Institute of Chartered Foresters.
His qualifications include the Technical Certificate in Arboriculture (1996) and the Professional Diploma in Arboriculture (1997) and he achieved the advanced level of technical competence of a VTA Practitioner with Elite Training, awarded by Claus Mattheck. He has undergone full training and is a licence holder of the Association of Mortgage Users and Insurance Group Subsidence Risk Assessment module, now regulated by CAS (Consulting Arborist Society).
Formerly National Chairman of the Arboricultural Association during 2002-2003 and prior to that Chairman of the Association’s Professional Committee.Also an Assessor for the Association's Approved Contractor scheme and also served as the industry's representative on the AFAG panel responsible for the production of industry best practice guides.
He is qualified to undertake thorough examinations of equipment under the LOLER regulations.
Steve Warnock - Civil Engineer
Steve Warnock, from the Godalming Offices of Scott Wilson, does all the loading calculations for our designs of Adventure Constructions, ensuring that they conform to construction/engineering industry standards - that is when he is not paddling high grade rivers in the Himalaya!
Dave Clare - Testing Services
Provide the testing services for our high ropes construction equipment, ensuring compliance to ALL the relevant standards. Dave has worked all over the world in the 'lifting business' and has an un-paralleled experience in this field.
Dave and his team take enormous pleasure in comprehensively destroying everything we give them to test.
ERCA
We are members of the European Ropes Course Association. We believe that by belonging to this organisation and adhering to their standards and regulations our customers can have an added level of confidence in our products.
Jardine Lloyd Thompson Insurance Brokers
Supply us with our Product, Public and Employee Liability Insurance Policies.
BSI
We are member of the British Standards which keeps us up to speed on all the latest developments
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