If you’re going to be sat on the water for 2 weeks, you couldn’t really get a better stretch of weather as we’ve just enjoyed. The CCF central camp at Wathgil ran for 3 weeks but, being with my own Contingent down in Cornwall during week one, meant that I was only available for the last two weeks.

I went with my own unit to Wathgil a couple of years ago and can honestly say that I thought it had the best Adventurous Training package I’d seen in terms of cadet experience. Six one hour stands of canoeing, kayaking, rafting, archery, climbing tower and volleyball, all within 50m of a central parking area. Minimal changeover times leading to maximum activity time at a great venue – fantastic.

To be fair, from an instructors point of view, six identical sessions every day for two or three weeks can get a bit repetitive, but the cadets actually made it a great couple of weeks. They were virtually all up for some fun and the weather certainly helped get rid of inhibitions about getting wet.

This year there had been some difficulty finding a set of canoes, so we actually ran two kayaking sessions instead. This might sound a bit repetitive in itself, but we designed them to have a very different feel. One was focussed on water polo, while the other played a few games but spent more time messing about with balancing challenges and races.

It was a great couple of weeks. Good company with the other instructors, and lots of fun on the water with the cadets.