Felicity Aston from  South East England is on track to becoming the first woman to cross Antarctica alone. The 1700km ski is estimated to take her 70 days and a lot of muscle power as she pulls all her supplies along on a sled. Felicity’s aim was to reach her destination on the 100th year anniversary of Roald Amundsen’s expedition (one of our very own Wednesday Adventurers) but the bad weather conditions have put her 5 days behind schedule. Clearly a great lover of the cold weather, Felicity has spent the last decade getting involved with various exciting adventures and expeditions. There was the first British women’s crossing of Greenland, a 700km winter crossing of the frozen Lake Baikal in Siberia and a rather adventurous expedition in Iceland. She was also part of the first ever, all-female team to complete the Polar Challenge, a 360-mile endurance race to the magnetic north pole.

Battling extreme winds, snow, freezing temperatures, blisters from her skis and not to mention a little loneliness Felicity is doing us all proud and ploughing (or skiing) on. We know she would think nothing of scaling our climbing frames in the snow, wind or rain.

At a recent teachers’ conference in London, sports medicine specialists stressed the need for P.E to be treated as seriously as other core subjects such as English and Maths. This would mean the next generation of adults will be more conscious of the positive benefits of remaining healthy and keeping fit. Currently the NHS spends £4.2 billion every year on obesity related procedures and treatments and educating children to engage in exercise and to eat well should mean a drop in this enormous figure.

Taking it a step further sports medicine specialist Dr Andy Franklyn-Miller suggested we should be looking to introduce testing within P.E lessons in order to monitor children’s progress. His argument being that without testing, no improvement or perhaps decline in skills can be monitored and no help can be given to those children that are struggling with physical activities. There was some opposition from the members of the National Union of Teachers who felt that testing wasn’t appropriate.

What are your thoughts? Should PE testing be introduced or would this reduce enthusiasm for physical education further?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes is one of the most famous adventurers of our time. Born in the UK in 1944 and brought up in South Africa he went on to join, first the Royal Scots Greys, and then the SAS. Sir Ranulph is what we would call at CFUK, something of a real-life super hero. Amongst his long, long list of achievements he was the first to reach both Poles, the first to cross the Antarctic and Arctic Ocean, he led the first hover craft expedition up the world’s longest river (the Nile) and has climbed Mount Everest not once but four times raising millions of pounds for charity.

Proving his super human abilities further, just 3 months after suffering a massive heart attack, 3 day coma and double bypass Ranulph achieved the first 7x7x7 (seven marathons in seven consecutive days on all seven continents). In 1984 the Guinness Book of Records described him as ‘The World’s Greatest Living Explorer.’

What climbing frame would Ranulph buy: Topeka premium climbing frame.

It goes without saying that only our biggest, bestest most adventurous climbing frame will do for ‘The world’s greatest living explorer.’ There are two 14ft rocket slides, perfect for racing across the garden. And it’s not quite Everest but the play deck is 7ft off the ground and there is a lot of climbing, playing and exploring to do around the multi-level play deck area.

Monday 21st: Balmoral swingset

Tuesday 22nd: Windemere with straight slide

Wednesday 23rd: Panorama

Thursday 24th: Belfort

Friday 25th: Summerville

Saturday 26th: Summerville

Sunday 27th: Summerville

To view the climbing frames click here

Now you don’t just have to take our word it, a study by Cambridge University has found that those children who spend more time outdoors are less likely to suffer from short-sightedness. A total of 10,400 children were used in the study led by Dr Justin Sherwin. Those children who were short-sighted were found to spend on average 3.7 hours less outdoors than those who weren’t. Indeed, running up and down their climbing frame, bouncing on their trampoline or enjoying their swing set may help improve their vision as exercise, exposure to natural light and looking at far away objects, were all found to be important factors in doing so.

Even as winter approaches, as long as children are wrapped up warm, there is no reason why the fun has to stop. What is more fun than crunching in the leaves or playing in the snow?

Monday 14th: Oriana Pavillion Grande

Tuesday 15th: Admiral Deluxe.

Wednesday 16th: Rocky mountain

Thursday 17th: Windemere with curved slide

Friday 18th: Skyfort

Sat 19th: Skyfort

Sunday 20th: Skyfort

To read more about these climbing frames click here

There are many considerations to think about when purchasing a climbing frame and one of the most important is the size of your garden. There are three climbing frames in particular that are suited to small gardens.

The Andorra Junior Climbing Frame is the smallest swingset. It is 3.14m wide and 2.72m deep and includes a vinyl chalk board, wavy slide, rock wall and 2 belt swings.

The Andorra

The Belfort is a fantastic climbing frame. Along with everything you would expect from a swingset such as swings, trapeze, slide and deck it also has a 2 child picnic table attached, perfect for messy play or outdoor eating. The Belfort is 3.89m wide and 3.15m deep.

The Belfort

The final climbing frame we would suggest for any of those with a small garden would be the Meadowvale II. This is a great value set and has all the elements a climbing frame should have. It has a 2.2m high railed wavy slide, rock wall, 1.2m high deck and trapeze bar. There is even room below the deck for a sand or ball pit area. The Meadowvale measures 3.91m wide and 3.21m deep.

The Meadowvale

It is also important to bear in mind that once the climbing frame is in place there should be a 1.8m perimeter left around it. This is to allow enough space for children to swing and play freely.

These swingsets are ideal for those with small gardens so never rule a climbing frame out.

The Selwood cottage, worth £399, is full of cute little touches like a sink, a post box, an awning and flowerpots. This is one of our most popular playhouses and is a perfect addition to any garden. We like to think of ourselves as outdoor play experts and if you have loved our climbing frames or swing sets then you will absolutely love this. Just like our climbing frames, the Selwood cottage is fantastic quality and will bring fun to your children for years to come.
To view the playhouse for yourself click HERE

The Selwood Cottage

Dimensions of the playhouse:
185 cm wide x 122 cm deep x 139cm high

Competition Terms and Conditions:

In order to enter the competition you must ‘like’ us on Facebook. Once you have liked us you will be automatically entered into the draw. The winner will then be chosen at random.

The closing date for the competition is November 7th 2011.

We will announce the winner of the competition on our blog on November 7th. The link to the blog will be posted in a Facebook status. We will also put the name of our winner on the welcome page of our Facebook page.

The winner will then be asked to email contact details to us so we can arrange delivery of the Selwood cottage.

The winner will have to co operate with any follow up from Climbing Frames UK. We may want a testimonial and images of the cottage with your children playing in it.

The winner must be aged 18 or above and must also be a UK resident.

No Cash alternative available.

All competition prizes are non-transferable and cannot be exchanged or refunded.

Entries from multiple accounts owned by one person are not permitted.

If the prize remains unclaimed, or we are not given contact details within 14 days of the winner being contacted, it will be deemed to be forfeited and Climbing Frames UK reserve the right to either re-offer the prize to the next entrant drawn at random, or to re-offer the prize in a future competition.

This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with,
Facebook.

We have done our best to listen to your comments and feedback and hope that the installation of Live Chat will make buying your climbing frame much simpler and far more convenient. Live chat allows you to connect with real swing set experts instantly. It is not a computer generated response, it is our knowledgeable team thoughtfully answering any query you may have.

The beauty of Live Chat is that we are making the online buying process far more like a face to face retail experience (minus the queues, car park costs and un-cooperative children). Once you are on our site there will be an icon which you can click, once you have clicked on it you are instantly connected to us. We really know what we are talking about when it comes to outdoor play equipment and can advise you on the ideal purchase with regards to your garden size, number and age of children and any other specifications you may have.

The Climbing Frames Team you will be talking to:

Nicola	Chris
Kim	Olivia

Aimée

Laura

We hope you enjoy this amazing new feature. We will keep you updated with Live Chat developments over the next few blog posts.

Let us know what you think.

Hanging out at the Selwood Cottage	The Selwood Cottage £399 - much plusher than most of our own houses.

On Friday we chose to ignore that little piece of advice and get ten (yes, really, ten) children down to a sunny location in Suffolk near Climbing Frames HQ. ‘God, why?’ I hear you scream. Well in the coming months we plan to launch a more interactive approach to our product. As a web based company we understand that people need as much information about a product before the commit to buying it. For some buying online can be a little scary so we want to offer reassurance that you are definitely making the right decision. The best way to do this is with product videos as well as still images. The videos give a 360 degree view of our climbing frames and other outdoor products, as well as showing how children play and interact with the toys. We hope this will give the peace of mind needed before purchasing.

Back to the day itself. One of our little ladies kept us waiting half an hour while she got changed (diva in the making), so we had a bit of a rush on our hands and trying to control that many children, surrounded by climbing frames and high on Friday afternoon sunshine is no mean feat. But we managed it. The biggest hit of the day was the Selwood Cottage children’s playhouse. The post box, the sink, the flowerpots (which were mainly used as hats) all kept our budding actors and actresses occupied long after the camera stopped rolling.

Head-Cam	Our little diva

We also pulled out our secret weapon – The head cam. We wanted to give you the rare chance to experience our play sets from a child’s point of view. The head cam (which looks a little like a camera popped on top of a bike helmet) was strapped to Sophie’s head whilst she explored several of the swing sets. A reluctant wearer at first, Sophie soon took her role as chief head cam wearer in her stride. After a few fun filled hours we were exhausted but also pleasantly surprised at how smoothly the potentially disastrous day had gone.

All aboard the sandboat £79	Perfect weather for a picnic - picnic table and 4 chairs £99

Whoever said ‘never work with animals or children’ clearly didn’t have climbing frames, sand pits and playhouses to keep them occupied.