farmer willie and wellies

Not so eager to awake this morning, the children that is not me, although I left writing the blog rather too late last night. However, the "Full English" soon put us in the right spirits for a day full of fervent activity.

Today the group splits and half spend the morning canoe-rafting and the others take part in a stream survey; at lunch we all change around. It was the turn of Cumbria Outdoors to organise us for the morning activity and Steve came up to Blencathra at 8:45 this morning, only we weren't expecting him. Meanwhile our Blencathra contact, Tom, was phoning Cumbria Outdoors to organise the day with them not realising Steve was already with us, which led to a comical call to Steve telling him to get up to Blencathra, "but I'm already there", was his rather mystified reply.

With Steve was Willie, the bus driver, the neighbouring farmer to Blencathra, diversification again. Willie is no fool, he has now 'gone organic', which means the yields from his sheep are rubbish, but the EU pays much better! They soon had us started and we were off to Derwent Water. Group B put on their wellies and and picked up their rules, tapes, clinometers, stop watches and dog biscuits, more about those later. They set off, on foot, for the mountain behind the centre to wade in a stream.

The canoeing for both parties inevitably ended in people getting wet but not straight away. The rafts were made from two canoes lashed together to form a stable craft; a cunning way to avoid occupying the session recovering wet paddlers and sunken canoes. Rhythm is the key to getting the raft moving and several methods were employed from dedicated callers, counting aloud and/or shouts of "now, no not now, now". Some got it some didn't and regardless of whether they did or didn't progress of sorts was made. What mattered, regardless of speed and style, was how wet you could get the other raft. This was made more interesting by the addition of 8b to the mix. They too were enjoying this activity and any animosity between the two 8d rafts paled in comparison to the efforts exerted to soak The Opposition.

To validate the splashing competition a football was introduced and the rules of some ancient game were called out, whether these were heard or just never adhered to it didn't matter so long as 8b got a soaking. There was some talk of a score at one point but with the goals, the rescues boats, constantly on the move it made this aspect of the competition a mere aside.

The stream survey was a little more sedate. Those that did this in the morning had the best of the weather and the rain ensured that those who went in the afternoon got as soaked as they had done in the morning. The walk took us up the valley from the centre on a well made track under the looming mass of Skiddaw. Measuring the stream was managed without the need for colouring pencils which I thought was a necessity for geographical work but instead dog biscuits were required. At first, I expected Tom to have brought a canine friend, but no such luck the dog biscuit only served to act as biodegradable sheep-friendly floats for measuring river flow. All the other aforementioned equipment was used to measure, width, depth and gradient. In the case of the those who went out in the morning this was done at two locations but for us unfortunates in the afternoon we were to benefit from those infamous summer words... "Rain Stopped Play" and we trekked home in fine, deep-penetrating rain. The saving grace of the afternoon was that we got the showers first.