WOW! What an absolutely insane experience. I thought I’d pushed myself out of my comfort zone before, but hey, turns out I hadn’t!

So the day started out really well. Our drive across the border of Spain into France was beautiful. The sun was just popping up above the mountains and there were hot air balloons surfacing to see the sunrise. We were both a little anxious about our first ever via ferrata but we knew it would be a great challenge!

The place we decided to go to had multiple levels. There was level 1 which seemed really basic, no level 2 to our disappointment, and level 3 which was the one we chose to do. It had a moderate level of difficulty but the reviews seemed to make us think so long as we were in good shape we’d have no problem.

Crikey was it hard! The guy got us kitted up, showed us how to use the carabiners, gave us a rough guide of where we needed to go, and off we went! George has a fear of heights so huge kudos to him for even setting off knowing we had to climb 260m of elevation.

It started off pretty moderate and we were both out of breath pretty quickly. We were unsure if it was because we were 1,700m high or if it was nerves – probably a bit of both! So after around 50m of pretty hard climbing, filled with trying to find our groove and really see how the kit works, we got to our first proper scary bit. There was no ledge and we had to scale up what I can only call a ladder in the rocks where we had to use every muscle in our body to move up, clip in and out of the different bits of rope, and not think about the crazy drop below us. You had to be totally present in every single moment, not even thinking 5 seconds ahead but taking it second by second. It was my happy place.

There were lots of sections like this and my nerves kept flipping from excitement back to nerves and I found by my third time of feeling terrified, I actually craved more! From 30 mins in wondering if I could make it to the top, to 1 hour later craving more, it was a rollercoaster for sure! And the pure high of reaching the top were endorphins like I’ve never experienced before, we felt on top of the world!!

So here’s to doing things that scare us! It was an experience I will treasure forever and ever.

For anyone wanting to try via ferrata, I think as long as you’ve got your own kit you can go for free (mostly) but this had kit hire and it was 39 euros each and you had someone who showed you the ropes. We did this in the French Pyrenees in a place called Llo.