Ardeche goes to the beach

This fantastic trip takes us to two spectacular centres and we've certainly made the most of our time at the beach: catamarans, funboats, banana boats and beach games!

Ardeche Day 2

Another day on the river, more glorious weather and wet and fun activities a plenty, off to the local town tonight for some ice cream after all the hard work today.

Ardeche - Day 1

Gorgeous first day on the river.....32 degrees, cooling breeze and the odd refreshing dip in the river to cool us down. Delightful! 

Quote from a student 20 minutes into being on the river ‘it makes the horrible coach drive worth it’...he couldn’t have been more right!

Ardeche Adventure Day 5

On the beach today - it was a beautiful morning out on the picos (small sailing boat) but unfortunately the afternoon was too windy to be out in the water so we enjoyed some beach games and a touch of swimming!

In the evening we headed into the local town which has a lovely harbour. We relaxed there for a couple of hours before heading back to town.

Ardeche Day 4

Today we transferred over from Segries to Mimosa (or from river to beach). After a 3 hour coach journey we arrived at Aqualand in Cap d'age to enjoy ourselves at the water park. Fun was had by all....water rides and wave pools galore! We arrived at our campsite just in time for dinner, we then spent an hour or so on the beach playing a variety of ball games. A beautiful way to end our day!

Ardeche Day 3

Disappointingly we had to cancel going back on the river due to a storm hitting the gorge. After the initial devastation we decided to take a day trip to Avignon which was only an hour away by coach. This is lovely old French city and UNESCO heritage site. It was a delightful day trip...if naturally also a little wet...but the students enjoyed a wander and no doubt an ice cream or 2.

The clouds were very impressive yet somewhat threatening. We are now all safely back to camp and although not that warm...we have no rain!

Ardeche Day 2

The best news of the day...the sunshine came out all day!

After a slightly slow start to the day we got out onto the river at 9 and started the day's challenge of a further 12km down the gorge. We had lots of fun tackling new rapids, capsizing each over and wombling down the river (when you leave you boat on the side and go down the rapids in your life jacket ensuring you 'assume the flume') which is a huge amount of fun....even if quite a large amount of water goes up the nostrils.  We stopped for a canoe lunch, and as it's France this of course involved ham & cheese (and many salad additions) in a lovely fresh baguette.

After our lunch stop we continued down and stopped to play 'king of the rock' where the students attempt to skid down the rocks with algae on and then 'claim the rock'. It's messy but great fun!

We finished the day on the river climbing up 'la mas' to exit the the gorge, after the 40 minute walk up hill the coach journey back to camp was quite peaceful!

We ended the day with a game of touch rugby and some pool time.

A really lovely day!

Ardeche Day 1

After a delayed journey down we finally made it to Segries at 10am this morning. We were weary and achy after our 19 hour coach trip but this was nothing a cold shower, freshen up and a pain au chocolate couldn't fix.


After some river training and a substantial lunch we headed out on the coach to the river to begin our decent. Two by two we wove down the river testing our skills on the rapids, developing our ability as we went. Rock jumps and games including 'washing machine' and 'tekken' meant that students were having a lovely time even if (for the first time in years) the sun didn't want to come out! We are now praying for the sun to show its face tomorrow!

Ardeche Final Day

Ok, So we're at the beach not in the Ardeche and the sun is shining!