Edinburgh Stag Do Ideas

While most folk will take any excuse for a party, there are some party reasons that have stood the test of time. Take the stag do, for example. It's been around since at least early Greek times when the lads of Sparta saw to it that their about-to-be-married chums got a send-off that was worthy of Zeus. Today, stag parties have come a long way, but the idea is still the same - one last fling for the happy fellow before he puts on the ball and chain for life. While many folks are heading off to the continent for a stag weekend, there are some excellent reasons for choosing a city closer to home. You might, for instance, choose to do a stag weekend in Edinburgh, where you'll have your choice of dozens of daytime activities and the same wide variety of nighttime fun to send your mate off to the altar in style. Here are just a few of the things that you might include in your Edinburgh stag do. Daytime Edinburgh Stag Weekend Fun A stag weekend in Edinburgh can accommodate the tastes of any group from the active to the scholarly. Few other cities offer a range of activities as wide as the traditional Scots city. From kayaking to orienteering, from Five a Side to quad runners there's plenty of choice for a day of getting physical to gear up for the night. For the truly adventurous, there's canyoning - the art of hurtling down a canyon flume with nothing but a wetsuit to protect you from the rocks below. Is there a more appropriate metaphor for the new life your guest of honor is about to enter? Edinburgh Stag Weekend by Night They say laughter can cure almost anything - and Edinburgh's The Stand Comedy Club is sure to put that to proof. The popular club is often standing room only, so if you want to laugh yourself silly at up to five world class comedy acts in one night, you'd do best to get your tickets early. If clubbing is your thing, you won't even have to leave The Stand - when the comedy's done, a DJ takes the stage and the club transforms into one of the hottest nightclubs in the city. Just a Little Bit Of Naughty Stag Night Hijinks If you're of a mind that no stag do is complete without a pretty girl shedding her clothing and giving the soon-to-be husband a wiggle and tweak, then you'll want a tour of the clubs that hits Bottoms Up, the Fantasy Palace and Big Daddy O's. The girls are first rate - but again, the clubs can be busy on a weekend night. If you're only in town for a stag weekend in Edinburgh, you'll do well to set up a tour in advance with a UK tour operator who can assure you tickets and entry.

Paintball Stag Do in Nottingham

Are you looking for a novel idea for a stag do for your best mate? The typical stag do these days is more than just a night out on the town. With the average age at marriage rising, today's bride and groom - and their mates - tend to have a bit more disposable income - and a lot more reason to celebrate when one of their own decides to tie the proverbial knot. So when it's time to give one of the crew a memorable sendoff into married life, a lot of people are opting for more than the traditional evening of lap dancing and semi-nude girls. In fact, entire stag weekends packed with fun activities are gaining in popularity. If you live in or around Nottingham, one stag do activity that you might include in a stag weekend is a rousing afternoon of paintball.

Paintball as a stag do? But of course! Paintball may have started as an afternoon with a few nutters running around with marking guns, but since its inception in the early 1980s, there have been lots of little refinements that make paintball a perfect stag do activity. Here's a few ideas for ways to fit an energetic afternoon of paintball into your Nottingham stag weekend.

Scenario Paintball
Add a little spice to a game of paintball by making it more than a game. Instead of just playing a grownup version of Capture the Flag, let a professional tour operator set up a scenario for your stag do paintball game. Pit your pals against each other in an attempt to retrieve the kidnapped groom from the clutches of a brace of strippers who don't want to lose him to married life - or split them into teams to infiltrate 'enemy headquarters' in a daring WWII spy scenario.

Tournament Paintball
Another Nottingham stag do idea is to stage a paintball tournament. Let the entire crew battle it out to name the Grand Champion - and guarantee him a place of honor in the evening festivities right alongside the groom-to-be.

Chicks 'n' Stags Paintball
If you're planning a special weekend away for the entire wedding party, why not include a Chicks vs. Stags paintball game? Pit the guys against the gals in an afternoon of woodsball or speedball and play out the Battle of the Sexes in a Grand Melee on a Nottingham paintball court.

Paintball in Nottingham is just one example of a fun stag do activity that a professional tour operator can help you arrange. Other unusual and fun stag do activities include kayaking, orienteering, canyoning and of course, the perennial favorites - the Pub Crawl.

Evening Activities for a Stag Weekend in Bristol

Ah, Bristol! If any city deserves the name of Home of Comedy, it must be Bristol. Home to Jongleurs and Jesters, a pair of world-class comedy clubs, and birthplace of Lee Evans, Justin Lee Collins and laughing gas, Bristol offers some unique possibilities for stag weekend activities. A Bristol stag weekend can combine an afternoon of paintballing, quad biking or five a side with an evening of carousing and comedy at one of Bristol's rightfully famed comedy clubs.

The traditional stag night of strippers and lap dances has more recently been replaced with an entire weekend's worth of 'guy fun', often away from home so the scandalous naughty doings don't trickle back to those who might care. If you're planning a stag weekend for an upcoming wedding, a Bristol stag weekend offers many possibilities for memorable, unique stag activities. Among the many Bristol stag weekend activities that you might include are:

:: Quad Biking at a Bristol course
- An obstacle course run on quad bikes can kick off a stag weekend in Bristol with a bang. Get dirty, get the blood pumping and get the testosterone primed for a night on the town later.

:: Assault Course
- River rafting - upstream? A Bristol stag weekend favorite is an assault course that pits your team against the river - and other teams on a home-built raft made of articles bought in a 'ship's store'. It's another blood-raising activity that will prime the pumps for a hot night on the town later.

:: Bavarian Bierkellar
- Instead of a nightclub, take the Stag out for a beer-filled night at a mini-Munich Bierfest. With oversized steins of the best brews in the world, and lots of raucous fun, it's a Bristol stag weekend standard.

:: Comedy Club
- Bristol is the home of comedy - and the comedians that play the Bristol comedy clubs are past masters at pointing the finger at stags out celebrating their last nights of freedom. No Bristol stag weekend would be complete without a night of gut-busting howlers at a Bristol comedy club.

That's just a small handful of the activities that a Bristol stag weekend might include. You'll find more ideas at the Bristol Board of Tourism web site, or from a UK tour operator and event organiser.

Extreme Stag Weekend in Bournemouth

The stag weekend has come of age. In an era that features the MOST EXTREME reality shows where folks scale mountains and submerge themselves in vats full of creepy crawly bugs, it was only a matter of time before stag weekends started to feature extreme sports activities. If your stag is the type to appreciate the rigors of whitewater rafting and canyoning, then there's only one place to plan a stag weekend - Bournemouth.

A seaside resort in Southwest England, Bournemouth has long been known for such activities as parasailing, catamaran sailing and surfing. A stag weekend in Bournemouth can include any of those - but there are some even more extreme activities that can put your stag to the test and make sure that he's fitted for the rigors of the MOST EXTREME of all life's activities - married life.

Zorbing
If you haven't heard of zorbing yet, rest assured that there's nothing like it for getting you up close and personal in the most hair-raising thrill ride ever created. Zorbing has been described as a cross between a roller-coaster and whitewater rafting - minus the rails and the raft. Zorbing is an extreme sport from New Zealand. It involves a pair of transparent inflatable PVC balls, one suspended inside the other. You climb inside the inner ball and get firmly fastened in... and then they give you a heave at the top of the hill to start you rolling down at speeds up to 35 mph. To make it even more fun, you can fill the outside ball with water, and find out what it feels like to hurtle down a craggy hillside blindly, end over teakettle.

Zap Catting in Poole Harbor
If you'd rather do your extreme sports on the water, a stag weekend in Bournemouth can include an afternoon trying out one of the UK's fastest growing watersports - Rigid Inflatable Boats. Skim the waves of Poole Harbor, the world's second largest natural harbor, in one of these incredibly fast, powerful little speedboats. You can opt for a Fast Blast harbor cruise that takes you out on the open water to give her full throttle or add in some wakeboarding and waterskiing.

Do A Sporting Stag Do in Birmingham

If you're planning a stag do in Birmingham, you'd almost have to include some sporting activities. After all, Sport England has awarded Birmingham the title National City of Sport. Situated just west of the center of England, this sporting city offers a wide range of stag do activities for the bachelor party that's looking for something a bit unique and a lot active.

While no one is suggesting that you leave off the traditional naughty doings that have been a part of the pre-wedding festivities since early Greek times, these days the stag do is more often a full-bodied stag weekend with activities planned for day and night. A Birmingham stag do gives your party the chance to take in a day at the races, compete in races of your own, bust a gut laughing at some of the finest comedy in the UK, and then get up in the morning to head out for a full day of off-road karting, paintball tournaments, quad biking or whitewater rafting.

If you're looking for a Birmingham stag do activity that will provide some unusual souvenirs for the lucky stag, how about an afternoon at the Birmingham greyhound track? In addition to giving him (and the rest of your lot) a chance to pad your pockets before a night out with the lovely strippers, you can name a race to commemorate his last hurrah. By making arrangements in advance through a UK tour operator, your stag do can boast its very own greyhound race, complete with private box and bar, race cards printed with the name of your race and a photo of the cup for your race being presented to the winnner. That's a Birmingham stag do deal that's tough to beat and impossible to forget.

A Stag Weekend Becomes A Moveable Feast

<b>One Lucky Stag Has a Taste of Heaven in Estonia’s Thumping Capital</b> 

There’s a lot to love about a stag weekend in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallinn/"> Tallinn</a>. Right now all I could hear was ‘Void you like another beer?’, and all I could see was row upon row of straight, white, perfect Estonian teeth and long, shiny, blonde Estonian hair. The waitress, and owner of said teeth and hair, was asking for the trillionth time: ‘Beer. Do-you-want-another-one?’ Even though it was my stag night which made me emperor and overlord of all I surveyed, I couldn’t even muster eye contact and so just nervously spluttered out a well rehearsed ‘Jah!’ Sweet. Beer in the form of the fine ‘Le Coq Premium’ would be soon on its way and, well, I had to admit that my Estonian was coming along beautifully.

But before the beer could even be pulled from the beer pulling thing, before Miss Estonia could even return to service our table, the lights dimmed and there was a venerable hush. And after what had to be the slowest minute known to man, a vision appeared like a phoenix rising. Or something. Just 23 and a half hours earlier I had been arguing about the price of insulation batts in Reading Argos and now, before me stood – or rather lay -a moveable feast in every sense of the word. She was Tanya. She was 22. She was from Haapsalu. Or was it Hishpalaa? Somewhere west of the capital. She was naked. She had our dinner strategically placed on her 22 year old perfect Estonian body. She was very talented.

In Japan, this practice is called <i>nyotaimori</i> and the name literally means ‘adorned body of a woman’ and for the next three hours the unlimited beer flowed and me and my twenty-nine best friends wined, dined and hatched plans about escaping management consultancy and setting up our own bar in down town Tallinn. Or maybe we could open up an English school. Or an academy for young ladies wanting to be learned in the ways of contemporary British life. My Tallinn stag weekend was only half a day old and it was fast surpassing Skegness as my holiday destination of choice. We toasted to the Saku the finest Estonian lager to pass my lips, to Reading topping the table and to Tanya’s left thigh. We toasted to Tallinn’s remarkable ability to produce the highest concentration of the fit birds per square mile and, of course to me and my upcoming nuptials. We were still toasting when we left Tanya half covered in dessert and fig leaves and little else. We were toasting the magnificent delights of Tanya’s right thigh in a rather loud manner, lager and le Coqs in hand, when we noticed what seemed to be a troupe of troopers walking in our general direction.

Crazy-Tallinn-street-cleaners-who-just-couldn’t-part-with-their-soviet-army-fatigues (to them it would always be 1989). We toasted to 1989. To Berlin. To Gorbachev. To Reagan. To Yeltsin, who we were all sure was very certain of the infinite native delights of Estonia. To the greatest stag weekend ever. Thank you Tanya, wherever you may be, Tanan and Head ood! Thank you and good night. I will never look at grilled Greek pork in the same way again.

Peter Finlay spoke to Amalia Illgner. We are pleased to announce that Peter is now a happily married man with a house full of white goods in Reading.

Special Thanks to Chillisauce for organizing Peter's Tallinn stag weekend.

Now that's what we like to call service!