Springing into Summer

Each year, all our sections manage to run a fantastic program in a variety of different environments. One of our favourites is being able to go up to South Cerney where we have access to a fantastic site which allows us to run different water activities such as kayaking and rafting, and allows us to camp to enable us to spend more time with the young people.

This term both our Cub Packs have been spending some time on the water in their normal weekly meetings. Either by learning how to ride a raft (a new activity we can offer from this year), or how to paddle a kayak. These sessions were designed to build up to this weekend when one of our Cub packs spent the weekend at the lake.

Kayak Instructor, Dave said:

The young people have done fantastically with much improvement from last year. I look forward to returning next year to see further progress.’

This is the second year we have run this camp with the same being run just over a year ago where it was more of an introductory session for the Cubs. This time round, we managed to go round a few islands, and play some fun games in the kayaks (where only a few of the Cubs got wet)!  We also understand the importance of teaching them how to capsize properly (capsize is when you accidentally turn the boat upside down).  This is vital for the young people to understand for us to continue to be able to teach them more newer and perhaps even more exciting skills on the water!

The improvement was noticed by Harry, 8,

I was really happy with how i did. When i first got on the water i was just spinning in circles but by the end i going in straight lines!’

The weekend has earnt the Cubs a number of different badges from spending time on the water, to the improvement in the paddling.  Now the countdown has started to next year’s kayaking camp!