Ellesmere College started running their Adventure Plus holiday club last Summer. It offers a week long program of activities for 11 to 14 year olds and today was the start of the first week that they will be running the program this Summer. Some of the activities make the most of the facilities that Ellesmere College has on site, but I’ve been asked to provide a few sessions with a more adventurous feel to them.
Today I ran a couple of half day canoe sessions on The Mere in Ellesmere. Being local to the College , and such a beautiful place, it’s the ideal venue for groups like this. Being the first day of Adventure Plus, not everyone arrived fully prepared with a dry change of clothing, so we decided to make today’s sessions as ‘dry’ as we realistically could, with the promise of getting wet tomorrow.
Many of the budding paddlers arrived with some degree of previous experience, either with me or from school trips, but others were starting from scratch. After a warm up and a few basic tips, we headed onto the water to put it into practice. Most of the boats managed to get the hang of things pretty quickly but one was having a few problems.
As with many things, it takes a while for the brain to get a grip on how the use of the paddle effects the canoe. Once you get through that stage, things become second nature and require little thinking, but it can be a frustrating process to get to that stage. As a result, quite a lot of my attention was drawn to the one boat and trying to help the paddlers develop their understanding. It’s also interesting how our own impression of what we are doing can often be very different to the reality and what other people see. I remember having this trouble whilst learning to ski – I was adamant that I was doing what the instructor had recommended, but the video showed my bad habits for what they were. One of today’s paddlers had the same problem, only I didn’t have a video camera with me!
However, things go easier and we where able to take a bit of a journey around The Mere. I decided to take the opportunity to find the old boathouse which is tucked away on the south-eastern side of The Mere. I’d never been down that far before, and it added a bit of historical interest to the session. If anyone knows about the history of the place, I’d love to hear from them.
We finished off with a few games, but stayed as dry as we could. Tomorrow will be a different matter completely!
