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outdoor adventures with children, lake district. rachel crolla and carl mckeating. cicerone press paperback 217pp illus. £12.95

outdoor adventures with children

i mentioned a few days past, my visit to the local secondary school to address a group of pupils undertaking a relatively short cycle from the islay ferry to arran's small ferry to lochranza. i won't bore you with the details again, but my opening gambit was to enquire just how many of those i was about to address actually owned a bicycle. the show of hands led me to reverse my interlocution and ask how many did not own a bicycle, to which only one half-hearted hand was raised.

the group's size was probably around twenty pupils and i confess that this knowledge came as something of a surprise. i have been riding round islay for well over 30 years and the number of junior cyclists on the road has not varied one iota, so far as i can see. granted, there are always small kids on scooters and little bikes, but when it comes to the teenage generations, you could count the numbers on one finger. that fact alone pretty much explains why the sunday morning peloton consists of an ever-ageing bunch of velocipedinists, with a youth recruitment programme that remains pretty much steady at zero.

outdoor adventures with children

in my early years on the isle, i would organise easter bunny hops, a red nose day stonk around the runway and several other cycling activities that were rarely oversubscribed and ultimately faded into nothingness. but unless parents put some time and effort into encouraging cycling activity with their own kids and their peers, all the commuting strategies in the world won't crack the cllimate change problem. while this need not be location-specific, somewhere fun for a family holiday would make for a good start.

outdoor adventures with children

this is precisely where the first in cicerone's new series 'outdoor adventures with children' is likely to score well on the satisfaction scale. authors rachel crolla and carl mckeating have started with the lake district, a highly attractive region of the uk, sporting a decent spread of offroad bike rides, along with water and walking activities that ought best complement the cycling. while the post generally concerns itself with the road-going end of the cycling world, it's hard to argue against using gravel and dirt tracks for young apprentice cyclists, to guard against an increased level of motorised traffic, particularly around specific holiday regions.

outdoor adventures with children

the authors are to be roundly congratulated for not presenting the act of cycling with children as being a parent's ultimate goal in life, something that will be every bit as simple as making peanut butter sandwiches. "There's no getting away from the fact that cycling with children can be a faff." thankfully, they haven't left the keen reader with that as their endgame, moving on to explain how best to accommodate the needs and aspirations of the next tao geoghan hart, or lizzie deignan.

outdoor adventures with children

though the more draconian of cycling inflected parents may scoff at the velocipedinal dilution espoused by including other outdoor activities, the authors have obviously realised that kids often get bored quickly and a handy and immediate alternative is always a good call. for instance, as suggested within the book's well-illustrated pages, the carrot on the stick might be a boat trip or swim in a lake at the end of an offroad ride. deception and encouragement often go hand in hand.

this compact and bijou publication contains a total of forty adventures, all categorised not only at the top of the chapter pages, but in an easily accessible list at the front of the book. this is further divided into lists of each specific activity in appendix a, before the various other appendices at the rear of the publication, list attractions and playgrounds, cycle and boat hire and activity providers. for those parents looking for brownie points as a deflection from the amount of time they spend riding when at home, an active holiday in the lake district might be just what her/him indoors ordered.

outdoor adventures with children

thursday 25 april 2019

twmp ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................