Our man at the back, Danny Wallace, takes fatherhood to new heights as he conquers an unexpected zipwire alongside his son…

I was very surprised to learn, last week, that I had apparently booked myself in for a 300-metre zipwire across a lake.

I’d been booking activities for a family break in a forest. I don’t really make sense in a forest. I am not a natural forager, and I have little to say to a squirrel. But I make even less sense on a zipwire.

“I must have panic-booked,” I told myself, as I strapped a helmet to my head. “I must just have clicked on it without reading it properly.”

I think the picture of a father and son wearing helmets must have made me think, “I don’t wear helmets enough with my son. I want to be the kind of dad who does things in helmets.”

Well, now I had a helmet. And I looked like one, too.

“It’s not too late to back out of this,” I told my son, very bravely, giving him the opportunity to save us both. But he was excited. He pointed out that it wasn’t just a zipwire. Before we could even get to the zipwire, we’d have to clamber up trees, he said, with bright and gleaming eyes. We’d have to use precarious rope bridges! And tackle tightropes fifty feet in the air! It would be a test of our strength, endurance and balance!

“It’s not too late to back out of this,” I repeated.

Within minutes, I was watching him scamper across a taut metal rope with complete ease. Now it was my turn. I stepped on. Grabbed inelegantly at a rope. And immediately realised how dreadful I would be in a circus.

“Dad!” yelled my son, confused. “What are you doing?”

I had no idea what I was doing. Mainly, I was trying not to die. And as I struggled to find my balance, my legs broke into involuntary wobbles and spasms. I looked like a drunk Elvis. The kind of Elvis you wouldn’t invite to a children’s party. I was swearing under my breath, and suddenly sweating profusely, and my arms were everywhere, and this was only the first obstacle. Then, the ultimate humiliation. An elderly couple had stopped in their tracks to stare up at the 6ft man who’d managed to walk twenty centimetres onto a rope before breaking into the strangest dance they’d ever seen, jerking madly around. They seemed concerned for my wellbeing, perhaps physical, but certainly mental. And the old woman looked up at me, and she cupped her hands round her mouth, and she shouted, “You can DO it!”.

Well, two things. 1. Please do not attract people’s attention to this travesty. And 2. No I can’t.

But somehow, summoning the might of my ancestors, I made it across that small rope maybe eight feet off the ground. I felt elated. I also felt like it was time for the pub. But my son had already bounded up a series of logs suspended precariously in the air, and there was another little boy right behind me. I was trapped, in a ‘fun’ torture chamber they named ‘the Aerial Adventure’ but might as well have been called ‘the Wooden Nightmare Castle of Emasculation’.

Twenty minutes of using muscles I had never used before, we stood at the top of a tower, being strapped in the wind to a zipwire. I could taste my freedom. For the first time, though, my son looked slightly nervous. He looked up at me, his shattered husk of a father, and it was clear it was time for me to be a Dad.

“This is going to be fun,” I said.

And off we jumped, into the unknown – a father and son, both wearing helmets, just like in the photos. But it was over! It was OVER!

The next morning I discovered I’d booked something called the Cable Ski, where you sit on a small piece of plastic and a wire drags you at great speed across a very cold lake.

I was handed a helmet.

“It’s not too late to back out of this,” said my son.

Danny Wallace takes fatherhood to new heights