I’m working with the Adventure + holiday club at Ellesmere College this week. After spending some time on the indoor bouldering wall yesterday, we headed outside today to spend the morning messing about in canoes on The Mere.

It was a perfect morning, with hardly a breath of wind. This made the paddling easier, but meant that the kids couldn’t blame the wind when the canoe didn’t go where it was supposed to!

Generally speaking, kids aren’t interested in learning to paddle properly. They just want to know enough to be able to get around so that they can have fun and mess about. To be honest, this is a pretty good attitude to have, because canoes are great fun and are very versatile craft as well as being fairly stable in the water. So we played a number of games of various sorts, during which only one boat flipped over serving as a reminder that there are limits!

I usually like to end a paddling session with lots of challenges with an increased likelihood of getting wet (although these are always optional!). I had a few new ideas up my sleeve for today, so was a bit disappointed that most wanted to stay dry. Never mind, there’s always next time.