Gwilym's Adventure Blog

I have just finished a very hot and sunny Lowland Leader Assessment on the Isle of Wight. We visited coast path, woodland, farmers fields and downs over the 2 days.  Always good to learn loads from the candidates especially the local knowledge that they had between them. Just on the ferry now heading up to North Wales for a Mountain Leader course. It is so good to be back out doing what I enjoy and making good progress on clearing the backlog of courses.

 Another Lowland Leader Training course but a long way from the last two. This time I was on The Isle of Wight with a group of DofE Leaders.  Even though it was not the finest IOW weather, we had a great weekend and covered loads of topics. The courses all follow the syllabus but different locations give us variety in how we deliver and this keeps it interesting for me as well. Sadly the mole in picture 3 was beyond help but he was moved from the middle of a cycle track and given a suitable send off wrapped in a leaf

 A great weekend on The Isle of Wight assessing 4 candidates for the Lowland Leader Award . With a mix of hilly bits, forests, coast paths and farmers fields we covered the full range of terrain. Big thanks to Natalie who was out observing as she works towards becoming a trainer and assessor of the scheme.  Well done all.

The Isle of Wight was where I spent the New Year. 2019 ended on two wheels with some biking to a pub for lunch and back followed by cake. 2020 started with some Stand Up Paddleboarding, cake, lunch and a firework display. It is important to carry some traditions over into the new year and the continuity from 2019 to 2020 was cake.

A bit of two wheeled fun today (and pain tomorrow) on the Isle of Wight Randonnee with Crys. 100km with 1500m of ascent gave me a good lesson in life. Namely that I should have trained for it. General fitness and sheer will power got me through it but it would have been so much less painful with a little bit of training. I am struggling to sit down right now and if I do, I am not sure I will be able to get back up. This was a well organised event and most definitely not a race. A number of checkpoints all with cakes available made it a nice social day but the hill from Compton to Freshwater after 90km in the saddle was brutal and no amount of cake could make that any better.

This week I have been at Adventure Activities base on the Isle of Wight working for Wet and High Adventures Ltd running a National Beach Lifeguard Qualification for some of their staff We had mainly sunny days but the water was still very cold and sub 10 degrees which made the open water sessions a little challenging at times. Good efforts from all candidates and all those who took the exam passed and there were some very impressive swim times in the pool.

After a few weeks of mountains, I arrived on The Isle of Wight today for something different. This afternoon I was out conducting some risk assessments at the two beaches I will be using during the week to run a National Vocational Beach Lifeguard Course . I also got to take my SUP back to where it was born (metaphorically as I am sure it was made overseas). You can see in picture 2 the logo and the headland that it was drawn from at Freshwater Bay.

This weekend I have been on the Isle of Wight sussing out a few venues for future courses as well as conducting an IV on a NPLQ course assessment run by Crys for Wet and High Adventures Ltd . Thanks to assessors Bryan, Tim and Nick for their professionalism. In a nutshell I rode round the island on my motorbike looking at beaches and drinking coffee.