Blue Peris

Blue Peris is an outdoor centre in Northern Wales, this was my second time there as a member of staff and I went 6 years ago as a student with the school.

On day 1 my group went gorge walking, this has always been my favourite activity of the week and normally we go to Avon De gorge but the weather was against us. That gorge had flooded and groups before had to bail out so we went down to the next gorge. Not quite as exciting but still good, a lot more slide than the other one.

Day 2 we went kayaking in the morning, wearing my wetsuit was a good idea as the whole group jumped in the lake of a tree. The paddling we did was short, as the group wernt in high spirits. I was at the back trying to teach a couple to paddle in a straight line instead of spinning around in circles.

In the afternoon we went climbing. This involved me coaching a few of the weaker students up the rock.
After climbing we went for home made ice cream from the nearest town.

Day 3 we went down a slate mine which was awesome! This was one thing I had never done before, similar to caving but more open.

Day 4 was the best day of the week by far! Today was option today so we had a choice of adventure climb, paddling or mining. I chose mining of course, it was a level 2 mine which meant we had to do some scary rope work. However the scariest part of the day was entering the mine, the biggest spiders I've seen in the UK!

Next we had to abseil into the lower level of the mine, this meant I went first. I expected to be lowered slowly, but no, the instructor dropped me down, I was heading straight for the flooded mine shaft and only just missed it.

Day 5 was the last day in Wales and this was the mountain day. My group walked up Devils Kitchen which was basically steps the whole was up, we made it to the top in good time. And then descended as the students were getting bored.

Finland

As part of my degree one unit we must complete is Expedition Planning. So as a team of  we planned an expedition to Finland to Seitseminem National Park.

We flew in to Helsinki and then flew to Tampere on a tiny plane with propellors. We landed and had to get into the town to find the hostel we were staying that night. After walking around for over an hour we eventually found it. That night we felt we needed one last McDonalds before heading into the forest.

The first morning we had to go shopping to buy all of our food for the next 6 days, we could take all the food for 11 days as we could barely carry  days worth of food. To get to the park involved getting a train from Tampere to Parkano, which is in the middle of knowhere!
We then began walking, during the planning stage we thought that we would be able to walk the whole distance in one day, however that was wrong. We managed half the distance (8 miles) on the first day walking in the rain on dirt tracks and then on a road. We also came across a part which was in use by the Military.

After the first day walk, we still hadnt reached the National Park so that night we had to wild camp in a forest by a road. By this point we had run out of water.
We walked the next day with NO water (another 9 miles) with blistered feet from carrying heavy bags.
Eventually we reached the Visitor Centre and found tap, but it was frozen! We then decided to try the lakes, but we arrived at the end of winter so lakes were still frozen. But as this point we were desperate for water, so we walked onto the frozen lake and had to find plaes where it had thord out.

Over the next week and a bit we set up camp in 3 different places. The lakes were stunning!
I was realy worried about encountering a bears but the biggest bit of wildlife I saw was a haire.

Practicals from 2nd year

This year at uni our practicals have been quite different from 1st year. In first year we got to go climbing, mountain biking, gorge walking, canoeing, kayaking, caving but this year we have done 8 sessions paddling and 5 sessions climbing.

My kayaking has improved a lot and I am now happy to paddle grade 3 without swimming. My first attempts at grade 3 rapids was on my birthday this year. We paddled the Greeta. I did really well staying in my boat on grade 3 stuff but as soon as we got onto easier water thats when i loose concentration and end up swimming.

I had my worse swim that day, we had nearly finished the day and I had swam twice but on the last grade 3 rapid I lost it. I ended up going down sideways and couldnt regain it so I swam. But the water was soo fast i got dragged down over the rest of the rapids trying to hold my boat and paddle and at one point got stuck underneath by boat and was unable to move it.

Climbing  this year has been lacking, due to weather. Weve been to Scratchmere, Shepards Crag and a few inside rock walls.

Cairngorms 2011

So I fly to America in 4 days and I've decided that I'm going to attempt to keep a blog from my time there. However to start it off I think I need to include the Cairngorms, Finland and Wales from 2011 so far. Here goes...

As part of my course Ádventure and Media'we went on a winter skills trip in the Cairngorms. The trip was 5 days longs and the weather was imense!

The week began by walking out into the mountains away from the skieers. The snow was really deep at this point and we had to walk through a boulder field without all falling inbetween the rocks. When we arrived at an ideal spot we had an introduction to crampons. I did not feel safe using them at, our instructor was trying to make us walk up really steep bits of ice but I felt soo unstable. The afternoon went on and we got used to them. However after lunch we started doing ice axe arrests, and this resulted in a friend breaking their ankle as they slipped with crapons. And after this we didnt use the crampons anymore that trip.

Over the next few days we covered more ground in the area and walked to where there were deep parts of snow to build snow holes. We also learnt all about the rescue equipment in case of an avalanche which was really interesting and played around with that.
Making bucket seats to belay from was a fun day as we were meant to summit a mountain however a team member was ill and we had to descend back down. And this resulted in learning new ways to belay and make sterdy seats.

Over all this trip comes 2nd, Caving comes first!!

Cheese press, Yorkshire cave