Titan Abseil

Photo by xpress.photo.co.uk

The ground vibrated with the thump of bass. Above us, the imposing figure of the Titan Crane was suddenly lit up with rows of bright green lights underneath the jib. The sound of N-Trance, Darude and Tiesto filled the air as the bus pulled up and a dark shape illuminated with strings of fairy lights and glow wire staggered out. The Titan Night Abseil had begun!

I’d been getting excited about October 3rd’s rave-themed Night Abseil for about two months, so when at 5pm on Saturday the winds still hadn’t stopped their 70mph course across Clydebank, I was gutted. With severe weather warnings across Scotland, we had hoped for the winds to die down as predicted for the evening, but no such luck. A box of glowsticks sat redundantly on the table. We called off the abseil.

Luckily, the good people at Clydebank Rebuilt and our abseil team moved mountains to help us reschedule the evening abseil for the very next day. Around 30 people were able to make the new date and the clear night, brilliant costumes and amazing sound system (you could hear it perfectly clearly even 150ft up!) made it all worth it. We don’t have a grand total yet but there were some great efforts with the fundraising, including Helensburgh man Ross Ward who raised just over £1,400! Prize-winners are listed below.

Our last remaining prize is the Best Photograph competition – we’ll be collecting photos from the abseil by uploading them to the Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1190343@N22/pool/ or you can email them to me at kat.borrowdale@enable.org.uk. The winner will be announced on October 23rd – you have until 10am then to get your photos to us! The winner will receive a Gordon Cowan photographic experience worth £450: check out some of his work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordoncowan/ Gordon photographs and then paints a person or scene of your choosing to create a unique memory for you to keep. It’s a brilliant prize and we want to see your photos of the event, so please get sharing!

Thanks again to everyone who abseiled and if you didn’t get to due to the change of date, don’t worry as we will be having another night event next year and plenty of chances for you to abseil the Titan.

Winners:

Top Fundraiser: Ross Ward (raised over £1,400) wins an overnight stay for 2 at the Glasgow Radisson.

Best Rave Outfits: Ashleigh Niven, Charles Diaper and Carol Diaper all won a bottle of wine for their neon creations!

“Seasoned Professional” Award goes to two first timers, Katherine Coll and Kenny Walker. See Kenny’s abseil: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1alMRvRnSU

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See our abseilers take on the Titan on August 1st 2009! These heroic folks raised around £8,000 for ENABLE Scotland and you can too – it takes £20 and 2 minutes by calling 0141 226 4541.ENABLE Scotland August Abseil 2009

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The weather was rough but our abseilers were tougher! Despite the intermittant rain and wind, everyone who made it up onto the Titan fulfilled their pledge and managed to do the 150ft abseil. Wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who raised money for ENABLE Scotland…. we’ve raised nearly £20,000 this year through your brave actions and tenacious fundraising.

Take a look at the ENABLE Scotland blog to see some of the crucial work we’re doing. http://www.enable.org.uk/blogs/news_blog/
It’s also a reminder of how far we still have to go in changing attitudes towards learning disability – whether it’s increasing support for people living in and around Glasgow, helping someone to overcome prejudice and underconfidence and find their first job, or piloting new schemes that will give a person receiving disability allowance more control over their budget.

Thanks to everyone who took part in the abseil – you have transformed lives.

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Imagine feeling that you don’t want to do anything at all. This video shows the experience of Jayne Burnett, who benefited from one of the many projects ENABLE Scotland runs across Scotland. 25,000 people over 16 in Scotland have a learning disability – we campaign to ensure that people like Jayne have the confidence to take full advantage of all life has to offer.

The £18,000 raised so far will go a long way towards ensuring that ENABLE Scotland can continue to provide invaluble services, but we still need to raise another £42,000 this year. We rely on the money raised by our supporters and are lucky to have people who are brave and generous enough to push themselves to the limit for our charity - become an ENABLE Titan today and transform someone’s life.

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a) So, I got to the top of the Titan and I just couldn’t go through with the abseil. I was too scared to move and had to be ushered down by a well-meaning tourist…
b) I did it! But I’d never do it again. The wind, rain and torrential gales made it one of the worst experiences of my life…
c) I’m writing this blog on Kat’s behalf after the tragic accident last Saturday during the abseil. Kat was a lovely person, always up for something different, but this time it went too far…

The above are all possible beginnings to today’s blog that had been going through my mind for the last week or so. But luckily, none that apply. For some reason, after all my worries and fear, part of me had become determined to do the 150ft abseil. Nay, exhilerated and eager to do it – a bit of a suprise to me. I ended up leading the group of 5 of us onto the crane, only to find that everyone else had dropped back and I was to be the first abseiler of the day.

The safety rope was attached via an epic and expertly tied knot affixed to my two-part harness and I was then instructed to ‘just climb over the railings and off you go’. I started laughing and then realised they were serious – this was the part where reality became very surreal. I grabbed onto an overhead steel cable and swung out above the inky-black waters of the Clyde and a sheer drop onto concrete, and placing my feet onto the bottom of the railings I was hooked onto my abseil rope.

From this part on, no kidding folks, it was just brilliant and fun. I sat back into my harness, let my legs rise above my head to kick off from the crane itself, and descended at some speed. The view was spectacular – Clydebank is surrounded by very pretty mountains and if you time it right you are in the flight path of the airport! I loved it – even though it was several hours before I stopped having butterflies in my stomach. And there’s lots of photos to prove that I did it as well! Would definitely do it again and I’m sure that the key is not to think about what could go wrong and just enjoy the ride!

I’d love to hear other abseilers’ experiences – please comment here if you abseiled too!

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Hi Titan abseilers past/present/potential – I thought as I’m doing my first abseil from the Clydebank Crane this Saturday 1st August I would post a two-part blog entry on what it’s like. So, here’s what’s going through my mind at the moment, having promised my life away.

1) The Titan Crane is very high. 150ft isn’t much – just over 45m I think, but when you’re up on the crane it’s a bit isolated and if there’s a breeze you really feel it. Looking down you will see the waters of the Clyde and the concrete of the quayside and it’s only when you realise those tiny things are people that your body realises you are not on the ground like a sensible human.

2) The main thing will be getting over the railing and leaning back into the ropes. That sounds pretty simple… right? Except that I can tell already that I’m going to almost totally freeze up and every movement will be hard. This is because the Titan crane is very high.

3) Once I trust the ropes and the lovely people at Glagow Climbing Centre, it might even be fun. I am trying to convince myself of this. Hanging in mid-air could be like a really big version of a rope swing. Right?

4) The money I raise will be changing someone’s life. It sounds cheesy, but when forcing yourself to fall off something very big against all natural instincts, it can be a good mantra to repeat. Time spent on www.enable.org.uk does make me feel slightly more justified in my craziness.

5) If I do this, I will definitely get bought a few drinks afterwards, I’ll know that I can get past being scared of things and take rewarding risks, and maybe I will stop being nominated in that stupid ‘Compare People’ application on Facebook as the least brave of my friends.

This is the plan anyway. Part II to follow on Monday.

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