Bumblebee Paddles

A couple of months back now, County ran an adult watersports day for leaders, unit helpers and anyone else over eighteen who wanted to have the fun that the girls get to have. A week or so before this story opens, the Brownies and Guides had a day each (it’s too far for my Brownies and I don’t do Guides so I missed both of them) and now it was the turn of the Rangers. I like to offer them watersports for fairly obvious reasons but this one sounded particularly fun – an expedition around an island! Unfortunately, while we were at the adult day, the county lady who organises all this brought up the subject of the Brownie day and how she was very clear that the Brownie watersports were for the Brownies, not the adults, and the purpose of today was watersports for the adults. That meant, pretty explicitly, that the Ranger day was going to be for the Rangers. Still, I held out hope. I’m not like other leaders, I’m a boathouse leader. I’d have had an even better reason if things had panned out like I hoped last year. But they didn’t and they almost certainly won’t this year either.

Anyway. I got two of my Rangers to come; a trickier thing than it sounds since I haven’t seen half of them since March because they’ve been doing their GCSEs and of the three remaining, I’ve only seen two of them twice since then. For the purposes of this blog, let’s name the two girls who came: Halle and Annie. Halle has been to Rangers twice since March – last week we went to the boathouse and for various reasons (Annie being ill chief among them, another being on holiday, one being busy, two being non-existent and so on), she was the only one there. Well, Ladybird’s Rangers were there. I have six on a good day, they have around the same number, so we put them together for boathouse evenings, so Halle was the only one of mine with three of Ladybird’s. Unfortunately, it was too windy for kayaking and we made the last-minute decision to build rafts instead. Annie I haven’t seen since March. She was supposed to be at the boathouse the week before but was ill.

There were 20 places for Rangers on this county watersports day, of which 11 were still vacant when I checked the night before. It transpired that the 9 Rangers booked on were two of mine, two of the aforementioned county lady’s, three belonging to two more members of the county team and two of their Young Leaders. So four adults, including the one who organised it, and me being the only “ordinary” leader with no county role. Three of us turned up very early, not knowing what traffic or parking would be like at this time of year. I was there 50 minutes before we’d asked for the girls and I was just putting my suncream on and plaiting my hair when the other two turned up. So we went off for breakfast. Let’s give everyone names: the county lady who organised it all can be Rabbit and the other two can be Badger and Fox. Badger & Fox had their Young Leaders with them and by the time we wandered back to the boat, one of their Rangers had appeared. My two were a minute or two past the “please be there no later than 9.30am!” and Rabbit’s were another minute or two after that but the final two Rangers were late enough that we started worrying just a little. The ferry people had told us we’d be first on but we were last. Annie was fretting about the fact that every seat on top of the ferry had been taken and we still weren’t boarding and I was thinking the same thing.

Fortunately, they opted to put on a second ferry and we were first onto that, although with maybe half a dozen innocent tourists who hadn’t realised they were on the Guiding boat. It’s about twenty minutes over to the island, which was just a little worry for me when Badger pointed out that she’s really bad on boats. No one can get seasick in twenty minutes in reasonably placid water, right? Right.

So we got over a little before 10.30 with a stiff mile-long walk up to the watersports centre. Fortunately, that was booked for 12, which gave us about an hour and a quarter to wend our way up. Rabbit had brought a photo quiz and some Sindy dolls and the girls divided into their groups and made their way to the outdoors centre via sixteen or so photo opportunities. Rabbit was requested to go with her group but the rest of them went off on their own which left me with Badger and Fox. We did a little birdwatching (saw an avocet via the videocamera), ticked off about half the list and arrived at the outdoors centre just in time, to find most of the girls drifting either into the toilets or into the little Guide-and-Scout-themed shop.

We’d told the girls to wear swimwear and that they’d be given wetsuits and buoyancy aids but it was such a hot day that the wetsuits were optional and every single girl opted not to wear one. Getting out of denim shorts and into buoyancy aids was more of a hassle than it should have been (although I’ll take Rabbit’s compliment: “your two are great, just getting on with it” as they methodically sorted and tightened each other’s buoyancy aids and then got on with brushing and tying back their hair while everyone else tried to figure out how to put the BAs on). Then it was a quick stroll down to the sea.

We divided the girls into two groups – Badger & Fox’s Rangers and Young Leaders together, my Rangers with Rabbit’s – and one group kayaked while the other tried paddleboarding. My two are reasonably practical and jumping on paddleboards was no problem but one of Badger & Fox’s – who’d been excited enough about this to buy a new swimsuit for the occasion – had somehow got caught in a bad brain loop and had become nervous. I gather she’s either not a strong swimmer or she’s like me and doesn’t like being in the cold water, and I think she’d absolutely convinced herself that she was going to capsize and get wet and drown or something along those lines. She sat at first in the back of a double kayak, looking very unhappy and uncooperative but within five minutes, she’d cautiously raised the paddle and by the time they’d been for a mini expedition, she was as much into it as the others. The full expedition had to be cancelled but they could take a little journey for twenty minutes or so along the shore before coming back and playing some games.

The grown-ups sat on the beach and ate lunch and took photos while this was going on. In case of getting to join in, I was wearing my swimming costume under my uniform and mentioned that since it was so hot, I might swim while they were in the water. That looked less appealing now we were on the beach. The water was brown with fine soft sand and there was seaweed and I didn’t fancy wading out to where it was clearer. “What have you got to lose?” Rabbit asked. “You’re already dressed for it.” I folded under the peer pressure. Also, Badger asked me to take some up-close photos of the action with my GoPro and I do like to take photos. Got a blog to illustrate!

Ok, it took a bit of time to actually get into the water. It’s very shallow and wasn’t really practical to wade far enough out to swim properly. The groups had swapped by now. The predictions that the nervous girl would refuse to get on the paddleboard were proven wrong (later she said that the paddleboarding was her favourite). The new kayakers, which included my two, vanished along the beach and I was left with the other half of the group on their boards. The Young Leaders were having a whale of a time standing up on theirs and falling dramatically off, the others were paddling a little more cautiously around and then the instructor had the bright idea of linking them all together by their leashes to create a train and then followed the kayakers down the beach.

I soon learned that I couldn’t keep up by either trying to swim or creeping along under the water. I had to stand up in thigh-deep water and wade like some kind of Titan or Amazon. Excellent, I’d get pictures of them all, including the kayakers! And then we caught up with the kayakers who promptly set off back for where we’d started at a speed only kayaks can get up to. I couldn’t possibly wade fast enough to get pictures of them except as they vanished into the distance, so I resigned myself to wading all the way back up the beach again. The water was nice by now – the bottom was sandy, there wasn’t too much weed, the water was pretty clear and it was warm.

At last we came out. Now we had two hours until the boat left. We needed to be on the jetty half an hour before to make sure everyone made it on time and so we could judge the photo trail competition, and it would take half an hour to get dried and dressed and ready to go again. Effectively, that left an hour to cover the mile or so back to the boat via any photos that still needed to be taken.

Badger, Fox and I ambled along, hunting up our last few items. The trail was just a bit too far out of our way to get a photo of and we had to be imaginative when it came to one of the wildlife photos (only for it to turn out at least two of the Ranger/Young Leader groups had done exactly the same thing). We hadn’t had a Sindy to take photos with so we’d used my island badge as our mascot. Meanwhile, the girls had given Sindy an excellent day out, with her posed and positioned in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. My two won the “photo with reef knot” clause by tying the reef knot around Sindy instead of tying a noose around her neck next to a reef knot. Absolutely everyone had the same idea for the “photo with tartan”, “photo with stained glass” and “photo with World Flag”. “Photo with recycling bin” turned out difficult because there are no public bins on the island; the idea being that you either return your ice cream tubs and coffee cups to the cafe or take it home with you, but my Rangers had got a private tour of a bin behind a coded door (thanks in part, I suspect, to Halle having volunteered on this very island for a year or two for her Bronze DofE) and Fox talked nicely to reception who took a photo of their private bin for her, albeit without my badge.

Mine won the competition on a technicality and cemented it in the tiebreak which was a Guiding-related trivia question with an answer I genuinely wouldn’t have expected them to know. And then we were back on the boat! Unfortunately, the jetty on the island is washed with very strong waves and we had to sit there for some fifteen minutes before setting off. Even more unfortunately, Halle is very prone to motion sickness and while she’d made it across in the morning just fine, that didn’t do her any good at all. Could have done without that. Twenty minutes until she’s someone else’s problem. Fifteen more minutes until I can hand her over. Please, Halle, let your lunch stay where it is until you’re back on shore. Ten more minutes. And she made it! She came to Rangers the next day and reported…..

And so that was the Ranger watersports day! We talked on the boat on the way back about other watersports they might be interested in for next year, so Rabbit is going to look into sailing and gig rowing and even jet skis (I very much suspect the latter won’t happen for assorted reasons) and we’ll see what happens.