Adventure School takes shelter
Taking shelter from the Go Outdoors
The Derrymount Adventure School has been running for half a term so far and the students who chose this as one of the KS4 options have enjoyed a range of activities so far, including:
- Cooking a range of meals and snacks using our fire pit
- Learning the necessary knife skills to be able to split wood, make tent pegs and whittle
- Learning knots and lashings and making simple structures
- Putting up a range of tents
- Making shelters using a tarpaulin
- Soft archery and slacklining
The students have also worked hard to help clear and expand the Adventure School area.
A slight weather worry
Despite the successes of our first half term running this new Adventure School option, Andrew and I (we conceived and run the Adventure option) had a slight worry in the back of our minds about how we might keep running when the weather turns against us. You see, whilst it might be our every wish to keep taking the young people outdoors for their dose of fresh air and ‘green time’ – a natural therapy we get from a connection to nature – we are aware of the practicalities and pragmatic issues that arise when the weather is wet and cold.
We had managed to put some tarps up before, but they were less than adequate as they kept pooling water and being ripped down by the weight of the water.
We had also begged some small canvas frame shelters and these gave us some protection over the elements over the fire pit area.
But providing a larger sheltered area was still our aim.
Go Outdoors to the rescue
You can imagine the relief and appreciation then when our local Go Outdoors store in Arnold supplied us with a large ‘reject’ tunnel that was destined for the scrap heap (or recycling, I hope). The saying ‘one man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure’ comes to mind as we now have a large sheltered space that will enable us to keep our Adventure School ‘outdoors’ through the winter and allow us to even sleep out over the winter – the students are so keen to try a winter survival camp when the weather turns cold; a real sign of just how much our students are enjoying and relishing their time outside doing something new.
Roll on the DofE season – we plan to put our first groups through the Bronze Award – and plenty of more Adventure School opportunities.
Thanks to Go Outdoors, our students can all now ‘go outdoors’ whatever the weather.
Tim Meek