Woodlands O.E.C.

Last week I was working for Woodlands Outdoor Education Centre, one of the centres of the Oxfordshire Outdoor Learning service. The other out of county Oxfordshire Centres are Yenworthy Lodge and Kilvrough Manor O.E.C., where I spent several years.


Last week Woodlands had a Primary course and a GCSE PE course running - a busy week for everybody. I worked (played!) most of the time with the visiting Primary School, but also enjoyed a little nav training on the GCSE PE course. The weather was great and I can't remember any rain during the week.

Not my photo - from the Woodlands O.E.C. website

At the beginning of the week I got to play on the climbing tower, high ropes course, Jungle Jim and all the in grounds problems. I tried to get a good photo of the high ropes course, but was busy having too much fun swinging about so here's (above) one from the Woodlands website.

Year 5 and 6 high up in the trees

It was great making learning so much fun for the kids, and helping some of them overcome their fears, although some of them were just dreading caving later in the week!

Wednesday was the mountain walk. We headed for a scramble up the Red Gully then on towards Twmpa @ 690m (which is definitely a mountain when you're only 3ft tall and in year 5!

Towards the top of Red Gully.

An exciting view in the hill mist over the drop down the side of the Black Mountains.

Not far to the top now!

It was actually quite mild for November last week. On the way down the group discovered for the first time in the week, and not the last how much fun mud can be.. I basically had to stop them rolling around in it!

We had to share the top with just 1 other group - who just appeared out of the mist.

On the way down. We managed to find a place where we could do a mini grass slide in our waterproofs. This is the summer equivalent of winter snow glissading :)

On the way to the cave - and we've hit the Welsh RUSH HOUR... Luckily they passed by quite quickly with very minimal sheep road rage.

Porth yr Ogof. This is Chris's group of SUT (soldiers under training) from the SDW (soldier development wing) in Sennybridge.

On to the canoe day now and this is where we had our 'picnic' in Brecon with the Usk on one side and the Canal on the other.

Canoeing is great fun - but is splashing in puddles even better! After the picnic it did seem to be!

So a great week for everybody - everybody is a winner - even the traffic warden - but that's another story!!!

Canoeing

Today working at Trewern OEC we went canoeing from Glasbury to Hay-on-Wye... A really busy day on the Wye for centres, families and tourists.

Developing Soldiers

Another week at the Soldier Development Wing (SDW). We develop their core values, which includes Courage,

Discipline, Respect, Integrity, Loyalty and Selfless Commitment.

The weather stayed good for us this week. It's still quite warm and we had slight winds and little rain - but lots of hill fog. My memory of the week is the SUT (soldier under training) who capsized over 10 times, and a different SUT who nearly learnt to eskimo roll in a day! Excellent.

Glasbury to Hay

At last the kayak makes it out of the Garage, for a trip from Glasbury to Hay on the Wye. I didn't choose a day with the best weather, but in weather like this you can't go climbing anyway. I did manage to do it late in the day though, so I managed to avoid all the Saturday traffic, and I had the entire river to myself. The rain clouds did burst on top of me - made it very atmospheric.

I tried to take a photo of the flock of swans overhead, nearly capsized as a result - so the photo is rubbish - as good as my nature photography gets.
I've left the kayak on my roof - maybe I'll go kayak surfing on Gower when it rains next...