For the second day of Ellesmere College’s Adventure Plus holiday program we headed back to The Mere in Ellesmere for a second day of paddling. Yesterday had been a ‘dry’ session due to a number of the group not having a spare chance of clothes, but everyone was ready and raring to go this morning. With the kids split into 2 groups, it was again a case of 2 half day sessions, but this time with more of an opportunity to get wet.

A 3 hour session is a long time and, with the weather not being particularly summery, getting drenched at the start would have lead to some pretty cold and unhappy paddlers. However, kids don’t always appreciate this and, from almost the instant we got on the water, there were members of the group that were itching to jump right it. It’s easy to think that, because the water feels ‘refreshing’ when you dangle your fingers in it, it will feel the same when you jump in. In reality, the human body doesn’t take kindly to being fully immersed in cold water! Thankfully, I managed to persuade them to hang on – otherwise we would probably have had to cut the session short which would have been frustrating for everyone.

During the course of the sessions, we played a number of games and tried a few different challenges. I like to throw in the odd new idea from time to time and today we tried a game of kwik cricket. In practice, it didn’t work too well today but I think that part of that was to do with the breeze was making life a bit difficult. Definitely one to try again on a still day.

With 45 minutes to go, it seemed the appropriate time to start working towards getting wet! We tried a number of challenges that could all have ended up with the group getting wet, but they were remarkably good. It wasn’t until right at the end, once we had moved close to the get out and all the spare clothing that everyone started to fall in – perfect timing.