Today was the first day of Active Adventures – our own program of outdoor activity sessions for the whole family during the holiday.

Active Adventures aims to give as many people as possible the opportunity to have a go at various outdoor activities. They’re designed teach the basic skills whilst having fun in the outdoors. We’re offering canoeing, rock climbing, hill walking, high ropes and archery at various times during the Summer holiday. To help tailor the sessions even more we’re putting on kid’s, adult’s and family’s sessions wherever it seems appropriate.

Word is still getting around that Active Adventures is going on, and that it’s equally applicable to the whole family. As a result, today’s canoeing session on The Mere in Ellesmere only had 5 young men on it but that didn’t stop us having a great time. A couple of the lads had done a bit of paddling in the past, so we got on the water relatively quickly to see what they could do. To be fair to them, they actually demonstrated that they had some idea of what they were doing but the steering, as usual, was a bit erratic!

We had a few ‘competitions’ between the different canoes to test their paddling abilities. There were competitions involving speed, steering, efficient forward paddling, usually with a fair amount of over confidence thrown in for good measure. As the session went on, we played a few games that involved getting splashed, which is normally a pretty good way of keeping their minds off the fact that they practicing what they’ve just been taught! Finally, came the bit of the session that 80% of kids look forward to most – getting really wet.

Everyone seemed to have a great time – it’s just a shame more weren’t there to share in the fun. Perhaps we’ll see you next time!