Tag: climbing

Climbing with Kids

I took the Duke of Edinburgh Award students for their first climbing lesson.

So I took 15 kids aged 11 – 14 for their first climbing session. It was meant to be archery but had to be changed at very short notice when the archery people pulled out. Lots of last minute phone calls, emails, risk assessments and begging for funding and RESULT! … we are climbing at Awesome Walls in Stockport every Friday afternoon until Christmas.

This is part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award and the students taking part are all new it and so just starting out on their bronze award. As you have to be fourteen (or close to it) to take part in D of E the younger kids are working towards a special school award instead. We’re hoping they’ll still get lots out of it and it will whet their appetites for the real deal when they are old enough.

We were pretty disorganised yesterday as everything was so last minute – we weren’t sure what to wear or where to get changed, whether or not there would be time to eat lunch, if we’d worked the timings out ok, and what exactly we were going to do once there. Luckily it all went well and like clockwork. We got there on time, were able to get changed and have a quick bite of our sandwiches before we started. Then there was time to finish lunch before going to get the bus back to school.

We had a short introductory talk and then a go at bouldering to warm up. Then it was on with harnesses and the first climb on a not very high wall. They all did well and so were able to spend the rest of the session tackling much higher walls. The students were divided into three groups of five, each with its own instructor. The instructor was great, explaining things, making sure the students were safe and knew what they were doing, but still giving them freedom to push themselves.

We had a couple of students who were worried about heights but still wanted to give it a go. They did brilliantly and felt like they’d really achieved something when they got up near the top of the high walls. One girl was quite shaky and feeling a little traumatised when she came down (we’d told her she only had to do what she was comfortable with, but she got up so fast I don’t think she realised how high she’d gone until it was time to get down!), but within minutes she was wanting to have another go.

On the bus on the way home they were all buzzing and saying how much they’d enjoyed it and how they think it’s much better than the archery would have been (some were quite disappointed when I first told them we would be doing climbing instead of archery). I was buzzing because they were buzzing. The teaching assistant who’d come with me had enjoyed it as well.

I didn’t think I’d be able to have a go myself as it’s costing rather a lot and I thought I would be pushing it to ask school to pay for me as well. The students were all keen to see me have a go though and so the instructor said I can try it out next week. I must remember my PE kit. (The video ‘daft teacher stuck up a wall’ that I’m sure will soon be appearing on Youtube will be even worse if it’s ‘daft teacher in business dress stuck up a wall’!)

The students will be working towards their level 1 and 2 NICAS qualifications (National Indoor Climbing Award Scheme) and will have log books for this. I thought I’d just be watching and picking up tips so that at some point I can come back and do it for myself as it is on my list of things to do. But if I can have even a bit of a go each week I’ll get a lot further than I thought I would at this time and may be ticking this challenge off in the near future.

Climbing, archery and bad internet

There’s a lot going on at the moment.

So, what have I been up to? Quite a bit actually. Let’s start with archery.

The man at the archery club where I was going to take my Duke of Edinburgh students has let me down so I’m feeling rather miffed about it. I’d told him in my initial email before the summer holidays that it would be Friday afternoons from about 12.30. After several emails in which he’s sounded as though it might happen at the last moment he told me they can only do courses on Tuesday evenings. Arrgh.

 

After some frantic hunting for another activity I’ve come up with climbing. It all sounds very positive. The club can fit us in at the times we require. The students can gain their level 1 and 2 qualifications in indoor climbing and it costs slightly less than the archery. Only problem now is whether or not school will give me the funding for it. I don’t see what the problem is as I only need the money I would have had anyway for archery, but for some reason no-one will confirm with me whether I can go ahead and book or not.

 

Although I won’t be doing the climbing myself I’m sure to pick up plenty of tips for when I do get round to trying this for myself. I’ve put it on my list of things to do as some of my friends are climbers and seem quite obsessed with it. I thought I should give it a go to see what’s so exciting about it. Personally I’ve always preferred to walk and get from one place to another rather than hanging about (literally!) in the same place all day. But I know I shouldn’t dismiss something without trying, hence it’s on my list.

 

I’ve also been looking into doing my level 3 Basic Expedition Leader Award as this will be useful both for when I’m working on the Duke of Edinburgh expeditions and for when I get around to doing my Walking Group Leaders’ qualification. The course runs over four weekends and costs £325. As it’s work related school would pay for this so of course I’m very keen to do it. The course runs twice a year, once in the autumn and once in the early spring. The autumn course would be best for me, but it’s full. I’ve looked at the dates for the spring course and it looks as though I’ll be unable to do two of the four weekends. I’ll have to try to move things around a bit, but as some of them are holiday things and as working in a school I have to take my holidays at fixed times, it won’t be that easy.

 

Duke of Edinburgh issues aside, I’ve also been starting to think seriously about my own business. Ultimately I want to own my own hostel and I have very specific ideas about what I want. But now isn’t a good time economically to start that type of business and also it would need a lot of financial input upfront. As I don’t have any track record in running my own business I’d find it difficult to get backing for something like that. So I need to start with something that is cheaper, easier to make a turnover in the beginning and ideally is something I already know quite a bit about.  I’m thinking sandwich shops / coffee shops. Having worked in this kind of business for years when I was travelling and a student it’s the thing I know best. I’m starting to look around at businesses for sale to get an idea of prices and locations. I’m not in a position to do anything about it at the moment, but at least I’ve made a start.

 

I’ve downloaded a few books on coffee shops, sandwich shops and small business start-ups on to my Kindle. My knowledge is out-of-date and legislation and so on does change so I thought I’d better read up. By downloading the books I’ll also use my Kindle more effectively as I can use the tools for highlighting and annotating and so on, rather than just reading. This means I’ll be getting to know how to use one of my new pieces of technology and working towards achieving one of my 2012 twelve targets at the same time as reading up on businesses.

 

Another of my 2012 targets that I’m working on at the moment is reading 10 of the books from the BBC Big Read list. At the beginning of the year I set myself the target of reading ten books from the list thinking this would be easily achievable, but we’re now three quarters of the way into the year and I haven’t read any. I realise I need to get a move on if I still want to achieve this goal and so I’ve started reading Arthur Ransome’s Swallow and Amazons.

 

I’ve also been working on my book database. I’ve catalogued my books up to the letter ‘C’ and already have almost 1100 entries on my database. I knew this would be a mammoth task when I started it, so I’m not setting myself a deadline. It does feel good to be getting on with it though.

 

The other thing that’s taking my time at the moment is trying to get all my write-ups from over the summer transferred onto my blog. I found using my tablet whilst I was in the Hebrides a good way to get every typed up straight away, rather than hand writing and then typing up later, but I struggled to find internet access. In Shetland there’s lots of free wi-fi and I was expecting it to be the same in the Outer Hebrides. So I have all these posts that I wrote at the time but was unable to publish. I have lots of photos to upload too and really it should be quite straightforward and quick, but my internet keeps playing up and stopping and because I have a rubbish internet company I’m struggling to get it fixed. This means that often when I do have the time and motivation to sit down and starting getting things updated the internet lets me down. As I do manage to upload my posts I’m backdating them to when I originally wrote them otherwise it’ll just be too confusing for me when I look back over them.