Away Day: Activities
Mar. 5th, 2009 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylRather to my surprise, I've really enjoyed today's activity day at Escot Park. And I don't think I'm unique; I think everyone has had a genuinely enjoyable time.
We started off gently, messing around with a large bungee catapult. I was utterly useless but my team mate, a good table tennis player, quickly got his eye in and was able to get the range right for the target bins with an impressive degree of consistency, even if he wasn't quite able to loft the balls in. We then moved on to drive a Land Rover with reversed steering and to drive a 4x4 around an extremely muddy course whilst wearing a blindfold. Unsurprisingly, I turned out to be utterly useless at giving directions to my blindfolded team mate — my inability to tell left from right really didn't help — but rather better at unflappably following instructions without any idea of quite what I was doing — I think being an experienced helmsmen helped, because I'm quite used to steering and maneuvering on instruction, without really being able to see where I'm going.
After a short break to recover from the horrors of driving blindfold — I hadn't drivven for over three years and I'd never driven an automatic before — my team mate and I meet up with the other three members of our group and went off on a survival challenge. This involved building a waterproof shelter out of natural materials and a short length of twine and lighting a small campfire with nothing more than a flint and some contton wool to use as tinder. We managed reasonably well with the shelter, although one of my colleagues got soaked when most the bucket of water used to test the roof sluiced in along one of the big logs we'd used to prop the shelter, but the fire was another matter. Despite my advice based on vague memories from the Woodcraft Folk — find kindling and dry twigs first, then gradually build up to a proper fire — the best we managed was a sort of smoking heap, kept going by people frantically blowing on a handful of embers.
Having eaten lunch — perhaps a mistake! — our group went off to drive a couple of 4x4s on an off-road track. Despite our initial feelings — my team mate, who drove first, said that under no circumstances would he buy a VW Tuareg, while I was extremely reticent about the whole driving thing — we both rather enjoyed it. If nothing else, the car was an impressive everyday miracle of technology. Decending hills, in particular, was particularly counter intuitive, because we were told not to touch the break but instead let the low gearing and smart technology of the car use the engine to break any acceleration.
We finished up the day with what was probably my favourite: navigating blindfold through a maze. This was not, quite, as difficult as it sounds because the group leader was allowed to see, but they weren't allowed to use any words to describe the actions the followers had to take. But they were allowed to cough, whistle, clap hands etc to indicate what the people following were allowed to do. What was really interesting was that we all started out hanging on the person in front like grim death, allowing the first person in the convoy to deal with all the instructions from the leader who could see, once we'd cycled through and everyone had tried out each of the positions, we all became far more sensitive to the signals. And, as if that wasn't enough, the rules were changed partway through, forcing us to abandon our code and replace it with improvised signals. Again, it was amazing how quickly we moved from following instructions to simply tracking the leader by the sounds they made walking along the gravel track. Humans, it seems, are nothing if not adaptable and trusting.
And with that, we headed off to Sidmouth, the hotel and dinner.
We started off gently, messing around with a large bungee catapult. I was utterly useless but my team mate, a good table tennis player, quickly got his eye in and was able to get the range right for the target bins with an impressive degree of consistency, even if he wasn't quite able to loft the balls in. We then moved on to drive a Land Rover with reversed steering and to drive a 4x4 around an extremely muddy course whilst wearing a blindfold. Unsurprisingly, I turned out to be utterly useless at giving directions to my blindfolded team mate — my inability to tell left from right really didn't help — but rather better at unflappably following instructions without any idea of quite what I was doing — I think being an experienced helmsmen helped, because I'm quite used to steering and maneuvering on instruction, without really being able to see where I'm going.
After a short break to recover from the horrors of driving blindfold — I hadn't drivven for over three years and I'd never driven an automatic before — my team mate and I meet up with the other three members of our group and went off on a survival challenge. This involved building a waterproof shelter out of natural materials and a short length of twine and lighting a small campfire with nothing more than a flint and some contton wool to use as tinder. We managed reasonably well with the shelter, although one of my colleagues got soaked when most the bucket of water used to test the roof sluiced in along one of the big logs we'd used to prop the shelter, but the fire was another matter. Despite my advice based on vague memories from the Woodcraft Folk — find kindling and dry twigs first, then gradually build up to a proper fire — the best we managed was a sort of smoking heap, kept going by people frantically blowing on a handful of embers.
Having eaten lunch — perhaps a mistake! — our group went off to drive a couple of 4x4s on an off-road track. Despite our initial feelings — my team mate, who drove first, said that under no circumstances would he buy a VW Tuareg, while I was extremely reticent about the whole driving thing — we both rather enjoyed it. If nothing else, the car was an impressive everyday miracle of technology. Decending hills, in particular, was particularly counter intuitive, because we were told not to touch the break but instead let the low gearing and smart technology of the car use the engine to break any acceleration.
We finished up the day with what was probably my favourite: navigating blindfold through a maze. This was not, quite, as difficult as it sounds because the group leader was allowed to see, but they weren't allowed to use any words to describe the actions the followers had to take. But they were allowed to cough, whistle, clap hands etc to indicate what the people following were allowed to do. What was really interesting was that we all started out hanging on the person in front like grim death, allowing the first person in the convoy to deal with all the instructions from the leader who could see, once we'd cycled through and everyone had tried out each of the positions, we all became far more sensitive to the signals. And, as if that wasn't enough, the rules were changed partway through, forcing us to abandon our code and replace it with improvised signals. Again, it was amazing how quickly we moved from following instructions to simply tracking the leader by the sounds they made walking along the gravel track. Humans, it seems, are nothing if not adaptable and trusting.
And with that, we headed off to Sidmouth, the hotel and dinner.
