My county has got into the habit over the last few years of running watersports days for the girls. Brownies tend to have a shorter, easier day as an introduction and the Rangers tend to get something more interesting so that your day gets upgraded as you move up through Brownies, Guides and Rangers – previously we’ve had climbing and coasteering with the older girls and this year will be a bit of an expedition, weather dependent. This year, due to popular demand, county have added a leaders’ day – we like to provide opportunities for girls but sometimes we like to get to do some of the fun stuff ourselves!
I’m not sure it’ll happen again. Today is Monday and it’s happening on Saturday and according to the website, 15 of the 20 places are still available. People are very good at demanding things and then not actually taking them up when they get offered. I spied it on the website and booked before I think it had been officially announced and then sat and watched “19 places available” for a week, and two months down the line, we’ve still only acquired four other people! This is why, despite regularly saying “we should do a leaders’ evening at the boathouse”, we’ve never actually done it – statistically, there’s no evening when 20% of the leaders in the county aren’t at Guides(/Rainbows/Brownies/Rangers) and for all the times leaders with the girls say they’d like to come themselves, I bet half of them wouldn’t actually turn up. So at the moment, it’s not something we’re offering.
So, here we are down at the beach at 9.30 on Saturday morning! Four of us! The fifth person, for undisclosed reasons, isn’t coming. We have T, who is the county safeguarding lead and who did my last First Response update (and was very excited to have received a grant and used it to buy a choking vest) and then the other two turn up… and it’s one of the Rainbow leaders from my division and her Young Leader. This is the second time in a month that she’s turned up at an interesting/fun adult event and both times, I should have known. We’re members of what is probably the smallest Division in the country – four units, eight leaders, three unit helpers, two YLs and >70 girls. We should talk more!
For context on Girlguiding’s hierarchy: Girlguiding itself is the UK. Then it’s broken into Countries & Regions – Cymru, Ulster and Scotland are Countries equal in status with England’s six Regions. Regions are split into Counties – no, not as obvious as they sound. Hampshire West, Hampshire East, Hampshire North and Isle of Wight are all counties, for example, and London is turned into at least eight counties, one of which is my favourite county name ever: London Over the Border. Counties are then divided into Divisions and Divisions are divided into districts, which are made up of units. Our Division is smaller than any single District I’ve ever previously been a member of. So I think we should be quite proud of having made up 75% of participants in a county event! County runs an event, we do our best to support it even if no one else does!
Anyway, the other three got fitted for wetsuits and buoyancy aids. I have my own, and my buoyancy aids has pockets full of useful things, like a knife and whistle, sling and phone case so I stayed outside, getting changed into my wetsuit & talking to our county adventure lead, who organised the day. She was murmuring her misgivings about the company running the day. Having previously sworn never to go near them again, they’ve improved a bit and she’d run out of other options but she was clearly deeply dubious and trying to be diplomatic in pointing out “they’re very relaxed. I’m sure they’ll be all over everything once you’re on the water but… well, they’re very relaxed“.
Misgiving number one was the lack of water. Surely a professional company who knows their patch of sea turns into an ocean of soft mud at low tide has planned their activity day accordingly. I’d arrived very early to avoid traffic and parking problems and had already been down to the mud to announce to myself, “Well, I’m sure the tide will come rushing in soon. It’s got a whole hour!” but nearly an hour later, our activity lead was still looking at more mud than water.
Because there were only four of us and they’re so very relaxed, they asked us what we want to do and how long we want to be out. I voted against windsurfing, no one else was bothered as long as they got to go on the water and we ended up with paddleboarding and kayaking.
Second misgiving: there were no SUPs at the slipway and no one seemed to know how many we needed. While our instructor explained how to hold the paddle, SUPs were brought over, literally chucked in the water and we scrambled aboard. We’d all done this before, so it was just a nice relaxed paddle, across the water that suddenly appeared in the last twentyish minutes (although we had to do a lot of wading to get deep enough to get on the boards) to the yacht club opposite. T pointed out a bit of local Guiding history – honestly, we’re surrounded by it. Take a look at the photos and see if you recognise anything.
Our instructor brought a dog out with us. Gertie is a good-natured terrier of some kind, with at least a bit of Airedale in her, and she was on the board, wearing her own buoyancy aid. At some point she moved over to T’s board and then, attempting to return to her own board, was the first in the drink. Somehow she went off one side of T’s board and resurfaced on the other side, having gone underneath, to be hauled back aboard by the handles on her buoyancy aid. She was fine but apparently found it frustrating that she couldn’t shake properly in her buoyancy aid.
Rabbit, our Rainbow leader, was next in, having been urged to take a step she maybe shouldn’t by the YL. It was really shallow, so getting back on the board was no issue. We’d reached the yacht club by then and were on our way back, in a leisurely sort of way, although T and I were pulling ahead a certain amount. It’s still very relaxed, very shallow all the way back and realising, as I’d known all along, that we were never going to be in any danger at all, I tried to look across at our instructor’s board to see what she’d brought in the way of safety & rescue equipment. Not much, as far as I could see. A VHS radio in a drybag wedged under her board’s handle. I know she’s 99.9% likely to not capsize but when you’re in charge, aren’t you supposed to be 100% sure of things? I’d have that radio clipped onto something, probably myself. She’d also brought out a transparent drybag with a few bits and pieces in the bottom but the only thing I could identify was Gertie’s lead, used only to get her to cross the road from the watersports centre to the beach directly opposite. Again, 99% chance we’re not going to need anything but I didn’t see any evidence of things like a towline or even a sling or a knife and I know this is a professional company who know what they’re doing but our activity lead put that awareness into my brain and the more I looked, the more I felt like we were lacking a few bits.
Anyway, the Rainbow pair came back more slowly, which gave T and I time to just relax on our boards in the shallows, enjoying the sun and the crystal-clear water. Our instructor thought we’d stopped because we’d reached the point where we’d hit the sandy bottom but the water was just a little deeper than we’d expected and we still had another 50 or so metres before that happened, although it was easily shallow enough to hit the paddles on the bottom and for it to therefore be easier to punt than to paddle.
So far, so good.
Next was kayaks. The Rainbow leaders opted for a double, I prefer a single and T would happily have partnered with me if I’d preferred a double but was happy with a single too. They got chucked into the water from the side like the SUPs had been earlier and we had to figure out how the seats were clipped in – they’re sit-on-tops. I started with that kind, as most people do, graduated to closed cockpits, found that sit-on-tops started to feel really open and exposed and now I’m happy with either. Once I’d figured out how to clip the seat in place, it felt a bit like sinking into a bucket, almost like a cross between a kayak and a shallow canoe. We all got in without anyone capsizing (unless you count that a couple of the kayaks turned upside down when they were pushed off the sea wall) and we set off in the opposite direction, to the other yacht club.
I’m not sure whether the Rainbow leaders had ever kayaked before but if they hadn’t, they were naturals. I find paddling as a tandem quite difficult but they seemed to get on ok, helped by the fact that the YL did more of the paddling than Rabbit. They spent quite a bit of time splashing each other and shrieking but they stayed upright and I mostly stayed far enough away to not get caught up in the chaos if they did go over, which they didn’t.
We got together in a little group at one point – not quite a raft, more a rabble – and Gertie went to try out the double kayak, which is more comfortable to curl up in than the instructor’s single kayak. She was out of her buoyancy aid by now but being damp and tired, she was in the mood to… well, not entirely behave herself concerning her owner in the presence of an under-18, let’s say. She had a wander around the boats, she had a lot of chin scritches and belly rubs and eventually, we split up to make our way through the moored boats up towards the other yacht club, deciding which of the boats we’d like to own. I liked Cornish Shrimper, which is a small but perfectly formed sailing boat, give or take the minor issue that I can’t sail. I’ve tried. I have my RYA dinghy level 2 qualification but I don’t like the way sailing boats lean and my brain just can’t comprehend how sails work. I’m ok when someone tells me to tack or gybe but I’d never know when to do it myself. No, I’m a paddle girl.
We returned to shore having been out for maybe two hours in total. It’s not exactly a leaders “day” but it was longer than planned, it had been nice and chilled, Rabbit said it was nice to do something different and the YL said it was nice to do something that didn’t involve looking after small girls. I’m lucky, my Rangers take a lot less “looking after”. We did a Region trip to Legoland a couple of months ago and that was a really nice day out, just me and two fifteen-year-olds occasionally crossing paths with Brownies and Guides that we knew, doing our own thing as if we were just three friends – except that friends my own age would deal themselves with leaving their bag on a submarine and I probably wouldn’t end up making plans for the best time to visit Guest Services in the hopes of retrieving it.
But she was right – we volunteer for Girlguiding generally because we enjoy it. Why put ourselves through all this if we don’t? But it’s nice to sometimes get to do something for yourself. County organises a few leader social events and we should grab those opportunities to claw back some fun for yourself. It would have been nice to meet some new people at the watersports day but it’s equally nice to meet people I already know (and don’t have to spend the entire morning forgetting their names and then not knowing where in the county they’re actually from, or how to get in touch if I want to send on the photos). I’m very glad our adventure lead organised it, I’m glad I went, I hope she’s glad how much the four of us enjoyed it and… I very much doubt she’ll do it again next year. Not if she’s got 20 spaces and only 4 people turned up.
(On the way back to the cars, Rabbit and I agreed that as founding members of the Division Fun Club, we need to get in touch next time we book something fun, because it’s almost guaranteed we’ll both be going.)
Bumblebee Paddles 