Another water based sport. I can sense your trepidation already after my foray in to windsurfing. Don’t worry, I didn’t make the leap to purchasing my own canoe after getting a bonus. This was more of a sporadic involvement over the years.
My first experience was during a primary school overnight stay to Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire. This was my first night away from home on my own so was a very big deal for me, my mates and all our parents. As every other kid in the same position though I was really excited to be doing ‘grown up’ stuff. We were camping onsite at the Hall and the two days involved a combination of classroom ‘lessons’ (these were actually more an overview of the two days with some nature stuff thrown in) and outdoor activities.
I remember the weather was really good, which was a bonus for any camping type activities held in the UK. I had been on camping trips before with my parents. I think this is a rites of passage for any child growing up. You can’t say you’ve been on a proper holiday if you haven’t experienced the lottery of British weather.
I remember two holidays in particular. The first was in the Forest of Dean. I’m sure there was some good weather involved but my overriding memory is waking up in the middle of the night in a soaking wet sleeping bag. The rain was hammering it down on the outside of the tent and a mini stream had started to come through the tent compartment that I was sharing with my brother. There’s not much you can do at times like that so the whole night was spent trying to curl up in whatever dry patch was left and attempt to get back to sleep.
We woke up in the morning (early of course, because you always do when you’re camping. You go to sleep freezing and wake up roasting as soon as the sun comes up. It’s just the way it is) in a damp, smelly tent. The rain was still pouring down and in true camping style dad was standing at the entrance in his shorts making toast on the camping grill. This was quite an achievement in itself as Dad cannot cook. His limit was toast and custard. For some reason it was major excitement when he made us custard. I’m not entirely sure why, but I know Dad milked it as much as possible.
The second one was a holiday we had in Bude, Cornwall. Again, my memory could be a bit selective here but I’m pretty sure it rained every single day for two weeks. Given how much I cherish holidays these days I’m sure this was deeply stressful for my parents who would have been hoping for a relaxing break. Given it was raining so much my brother and I took to playing in the steam that ran through the middle of the campsite. We had our wellies on and a raincoat but we always ended up getting drenched. I’m not entirely sure how my parents got our clothes dry every day, maybe they didn’t and we just put on the damp ones again the next day.
So it was nice to get a couple of days nice weather at Shugborough this time. We did lots of activities but canoeing was definitely the highlight. We were shown the basics on land before we got assigned our canoes and headed to the river that ran through the estate. It was great fun, particularly when we got to practicing capsizing. Some of the others weren’t too keen but my mates and I loved it. Nothing like getting drenched for fun as this gave us free licence to splash each other afterwards. We practiced paddling up and down the river the whole afternoon and came out of the water with big smiles on our faces at the end of the day. Not a bad first experience of staying away from home.