Go Ape has launched a new £300,000 high-wire forest adventure park at Margam Country Park near Port Talbot, the company's first ever site in Wales.

Opened on 27 March with the help of two players from the Ospreys rugby team, the attraction is based on a similar design to other Go Ape sites across Britain, offering rope bridges, trapezes and zip slides suspended 40ft (12.2m) above the ground. Each section of the all-weather, outdoor adventure course begins with a rope ladder climb, before a series of obstacles and Tarzan-style swings lead towards a zip slide back down to the forest floor.

Steve Sutherland, Go Ape business development manager, said: "We have wanted to develop a course in Wales for some time, but it has taken a while to find the right location – suitable trees with potential for a 'wow' design, quality visitor attraction with good infrastructure and good road links in to it. "We have ambitions for more courses in Wales for the future, at least one in 2010. There is clearly a lot of potential in Wales; a growing tourism industry and reputation as a top destination for adventure activities."

The Margam Country Park course is one of four new Go Ape sites scheduled to have already launched this year, along with Woburn, Bedfordshire; Rivington, Lancashire; and Wyre Forest in Worcestershire. An additional course, at Matfen Hall in Northumberland, is set to open in May, which will increase the number of Go Ape locations to 22 by the end of 2009, part of the company's plans to establish 40 sites by 2012. The company is also looking at launching courses in America and Australia.

Image: Ospreys player Lyndon Bateman and Margam Country Park manager Michael Wynne with the Go Ape gorilla