SRT Training, Browns Folly Tower, Monkton Farliegh.

When:  22 Feb 2012 7.00 pm to 10.00 pm.

Where: Browns Folly Tower, Monkton Farliegh.
Who:    Darren T, Rich T.

SRT Training.

 Our objective was to practise rigging and general SRT. We climbed to the top of the tower and rigged our own ropes to the bar and thought it would be a good idea to descend feeding the rope out of our bags as we went. I went first and descended without a hitch. Rich however ran into some difficulty as his rope seemed to knot as it came out of the bag. We discovered that this was due to the bag being closed and the rope running through the suspension ring.
We practiced ascending and descending and did some basic changeovers then we decided to have a go at passing a rebelay. we managed to rig a rebelay off of the stair handrails. Rich decided that he would go first and proceeded to abseil from the top of the tower down to the rebalay. This being our first attempt at a rebalay lets just say it was probably one of my most eventful times on a rope but the upshot he managed to get in a bit of a tangle and gave up. We decided it would be better to read the complete caving manual and then try again. We could hear the wind and the rain outside the tower so we climbed the stairs to untie our ropes. It was very wet at the top of the tower and was quite slippery under foot this was also not helped by the wind blowing in through the windows. We successfully packed away our ropes and our SRT gear and ventured outside to walk down to the car. Once outside we realised how much the weather had changed since we had started, It was blowing a gail and raining also the fog allowed us to see around 10ft in front of us and Rich managed to slip over and rip the button from his trousers and looked a bit silly limping back to the car holding his trousers up and carrying all his gear.

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