Harper Adams at the Adventure Rope Course

Both Friday and today, I found myself working at the Adventure Rope Course with groups from Harper Adams University College. The college specialises in agriculture and land based studies, and has a large foreign intake into the final year of many of it’s courses. As a result, the British based students have formed established relationships by this point and a day at the Adventure Rope Course is designed to encourage relationship building between all the students on their final year courses.

Up close and personal on the Stepping Stones
Up close and personal on the Stepping Stones

It was a pleasant surprise to find an ex pupil of mine (from my classroom teaching days) among the visitors on Friday, and even better when she ended up being in my group for the day – a great chance to catch up. We started off with ground based tasks to get the groups talking and working together before heading onto the bigger activities. I had my group working on ‘Stepping Stones’ which can involve simply getting the group from A to B without touching the ground, using crates. However, it only takes the addition of a couple of additional rules to make this far from straight forward. It certainly got them talking, working together and breaking down a few personal boundaries.

The Crate Stack provided a great bit of competition, as smaller teams of 3 tried to build the tallest tower of crates the could in a given time. Different techniques make quite a bit of difference on this one and, today anyway, it was the group that had specific jobs for each person that won the day.

Getting a system going on the Crate Stack
Getting a system going on the Crate Stack

The Adventure Tunnels are a nice change from rope and height based activities, and the group disappeared into the darkness on a mission to find their way through and break the code at the other end, before descending on the Parachute Simulator (or the stair for the less adventurous).

We finished off on the High All Aboard, which involves getting three or four team mates on a small platform at the top of a 30 foot pole. This is easier than it sounds and looks. The advice being shouted up from ground level is usually very constructive, but tends not to appreciate the fear which usually pumps through people’s veins when they’re up there. However, they actually managed surprisingly well with a bit of encouragement.

Friday was a great day, with a fantastic group. Today was pretty much a repeat of the same programme with a different bunch of students, but equally enjoyable.

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