Paintball
I knew from the start that I wanted my stag experience to be special. It was my final few weeks of being free and single and rather than just getting completely drunk with a few of the lads I wanted an action packed adventure and something that my mates would talk about forever.
All boys like combat, strategy games, speed and action. With this in mind my best mate Mark suggested that we could do some high adrenaline activities and save the drinking for after that. This seemed like a good plan, so out of all the possible activities we opted for paintball and it was a great choice.
We hired a coach to take a group of 20 of us to the paintball venue in the Derbyshire Countryside. It sounds funny but there is something exhilarating about dressing up in combat gear, rolling around in the dirt, and plastering your mates with paint bullets. Everyone really got into it. We were split into two teams of 10 players each and the objective was to be the first team to retrieve a flag. We had to eliminate as many of the opposing teams players as we could without getting ourselves shot. It really gets the adrenaline going running around in the woods, ducking behind trees and shooting the hell out of anything that moves. Me and Mark teamed up to cover each other from the onslaught of bullets from the opposing team. We tried hard to keep our concentration but kept bursting into fits of laughter and giving away our position to the other team. We had hilarious photographs of all of us dressed up like Action Men with our weapons and masks and covered in multicoloured paint.
After a full morning of blood pumping energetic activity, 20 men become pretty ravenous. We piled back into the coach and headed for a local steak house for some well earned nourishment. We gorged ourselves on huge juicy charcoal grilled steaks, French fries and plenty of beer.
With our hunger satisfied we got back on the coach for what I thought was the ride back home. What I hadn't anticipated was the surprise that Mark had planned as the final part of my stag extravaganza. I really love stand up comedy and unknown to me Mark had booked us tickets for a comedy club.
We enjoyed a few hours of hilarious entertainment from four different stand up comics who had us literally falling on the floor with laughter. Cocktail waitresses served us with more drinks all night and even more food for those who were still hungry.
We arrived home in the early hours of the morning just a bit battle fatigued from excessive adventure and laughter. I had a monster hangover the next day, but it was worth it.
