With most of our shore excursions on our P&O Arvia Caribbean cruise being beach-based, we wanted to pick something a bit different for our excursion in St Martin, so decided to do the zipline excursion at Rocklands Estate, booked direct through P&O.
Rocklands Estate is a kind of adventure park set in the forests of St Martin.
It has a chairlift up to the top of St Martin’s highest mountain, from which you can either take a ‘canopy tour’ series of ziplines through the trees; the ‘Flying Dutchman’, which is the world’s steepest zip line all the way back down to the bottom – or you can just take in the views at the top and then ride the chairlift back down again if you’re not keen on the zip line experiences.
There’s also a ‘tube ride’ slide, where you sit in rubber ring-type tubes and ride a track that winds its way down half of the mountain.
We were on the morning excursion, so out off the ship at 8am and onto the P&O-organised bus to Rocklands Estate.
It’s only a short drive, about 15-minutes or so before we arrived at Rocklands Estate, at the base of the chairlift up to the zip lines.
We got to leave our bags in lockers at the bottom and headed up on the enjoyable, leisurely chairlift to the top of the mountain.
Unfortunately the weather hadn’t been looking too promising for this day and as we cruised up on the chairlift, more and more cloud was building and the wind was picking up.
We had several days with rain on our December Caribbean cruise – but generally the rain would last literally one minute or so, passing over so quickly and lightly that it was rarely worth even getting up off the sun lounger to get out of it, before it passed and the sun was back.
However today was different and felt more like a day back at home in England with dark clouds, wind and frequent, longer rain showers.
It scuppered our plans for this excursion, which were to get the best views of St Martin from its highest point at the top of Rocklands Estate.
You could tell, in the occasional breaks in the cloud, that on a normal, clear day the views from up here would’ve been incredible.
So we were disappointed to have to be sheltering from the wind and rain and unable to really enjoy the venue as we’d hoped.
We still got on the canopy tour zip lines, which were a fairly gentle introduction before the big ‘Flying Dutchman’ ride at the end.
Despite the weather, it was still fun flying through the trees on the zip lines.
The viewing points between each zip line were a bit of a let down with the thick clouds, but we tried to make the most of it nonetheless.
One other disappointment here was that they forbid us from using our own camera on the zip line – presumably because they want to sell you their own photos that they take of you as you travel round.
We’d brought our GoPro, with a head strap which would’ve been ideal for getting some decent footage on the ziplines, but they were having none of it and wouldn’t let you put it on, which we weren’t too happy about.
Eventually after doing several of the tamer ‘canopy tour’ ziplines, we reached the top of the Flying Dutchman zip line.
It looked pretty intimidating – a very steep drop from a platform right at the top of the mountain back down into the valley, which they say makes you feel like you’re parachuting off the mountain.
By the time we got here, the wind and rain had really picked up, so they kept having to hold up the queue to allow for gusts of wind and hard rain to pass.
Eventually we got strapped in to the Flying Dutchman and after a brief countdown they opened up the gate and released us.
You plunge down what feels almost vertically to start with, giving you a real feel of leaping off the mountain, before heading at high speed down the rest of the line.
It was definitely fun and exciting and, if the weather had been more typical Caribbean than typical English on this day, then we’d have had a brilliant time.
Unfortunately the final weather-related problem was that the tube ride / slide by this point had to be closed so we couldn’t even go on it.
So we just had to get back on the bus and head back to Arvia, feeling a bit disappointed that we hadn’t really got the full experience of the Rocklands Estate zip line excursion that we would’ve if the weather had been better.
Still, assuming you don’t get unlucky with the weather, and aren’t too bothered about not being able to film yourself on the ziplines, then this is still an excursion we’d recommend – and being so near to the port, it left us plenty of time to do something else in the afternoon too.