Rua Fiola - adventurous training in the Hebrides

Date: Monday 15 September 2008

Kayaking and sea fishing, rock-climbing, abseiling and expeditioning: twenty intrepid boys and girls in Years 7 and 8 spent a fantastic week in August at the Wild Island Exploration Centre on the island of Rua Fiola in the Inner Hebrides.

This was our tenth annual visit and the week was packed with the heady mixture of fun, challenge, genuine adventure and achievement that we have come to expect. On the rock there was the usual mixture of mad challenges, including blindfold climbing, legs-tied-together climbing, tandem abseils, fish box abseils and upside down abseils. There were some good conventional efforts on the hard climbs too and Ben Lawrence climbed the notoriously difficult Kiwi Climb, notable for its lack of holds and angles that defy gravity. Meanwhile, on the water various kayak games, played with vast enthusiasm, honed paddling skills and confidence in the boats. Out on the sea in the big boats the fishing was excellent, the line fishing produced prodigious quantities of mackerel and the pots contained record numbers of lobster as well as dog fish and a conger eel amongst other things.

While the Year 7 group went on expedition to the island of Lunga, the Year 8s rose superbly to the challenge of a tough expedition to the Isle of Scarba. Delivered by boat onto the slippery rocks of Russian Bay on the west coast, the first objective was the summit of the island 1,500 ft above us and obscured by a thick blanket of cloud. Following a fine gorge inland and upwards, we made a steady ascent through heavy rain until we were able to leave our expedition rucksacks on a col and continue lightweight to the top. As we neared our objective the clouds lifted and we enjoyed a magnificent view of the sunlit neighbouring islands. Celebrating our arrival at the top, the hardier souls swam the length of the lochan just below the summit! Descending on very steep ground, we headed for the southern point of the island, harassed all the way by clouds of midges and collecting armfuls of frazzle (dead heather) for our cooking fires. We eventually arrived at the seashore cave that was to be our camp for the night. A wonderfully large and deep cave, looking out across the Gulf of Corryvrekan to Jura, it made a cosy shelter from the unreliable weather outside. Even better, once we had our cooking fires going in the cave mouth the midges retreated and we could emerge from our headnets. During the afternoon we had seen a golden eagle patrolling overhead as well as an adder and now in the evening some of us watched an otter playing in the sea right in front of us for almost ten minutes. In the morning, having cooked a breakfast of tea, bacon, sausages and toast and leaving no trace of our visit, we took the sharp and long climb away from the cave to reach a stalkers’ track that carried us round the east side of the island and down to the rendezvous with the boat at midday.

The skills learned on expedition were put to the test at the end of the week in the ‘survival exercise’, when the youngsters were marooned in small groups on various uninhabited islands and left to fend for themselves without adults for a day and a night - sleeping in caves, finding their own drinking water and foraging for food such as limpets, seaweed, wood sorrel and berries. Veterans of last year’s course went out for two nights.

At no time is the value of this course more evident than the moment when the participants return from ‘survival’, having come through an experience few people will ever have in their lifetimes. This course is multi-dimensional but one thing it does superbly well is take children out of their comfort zone and show them that they can cope. What a fantastic lesson for life!

Photographs: RGB