River and Dale Adventures

What did you get up to yesterday?

We were working with My Expedition Rocks on their climbing club over at The Climbing Hub in Bradford.
More than just 3-hours of climbing for the young ones, we focus on developing their skills, their confidence, their independence and their passion in the awesome sport that is rock climbing 🧗‍♂️

This week we trained our hanging strength before getting on some lead climbs and tricky boulder problems.
Last week we got them to peer coach each other and then perform a TTPP Analysis of their own climbing (second photo), a tool we will be able to repeat and see how their performance has changed by the end of the term.

Want to get your child involved? 👌
Check out My Expedition Rocks socials and website to get yourself booked on.

Where and when? 🗺️⏰
The Climbing Hub - Bradford Beckside Business Park, every Saturday during term time, 9:30-12:30.

Always excited to see more faces join the club, so when are we going to get to meet you?

Still lots of spaces available on our Level 3 Outdoor First Aid courses in November.
Get a blend of classroom and real-world scenario based learning with plenty of warm drinks and biscuits along the way.

6th-7th and 27th-28th November 2025.

1-day Emergency Outdoor First Aid Courses = £90pp
2-day Outdoor First Aid Course =£150pp

Courses run at Doe Park Water Activities Centre just outside of Bradford.

Get in touch or check out our website to book your place now.

That’s a wrap for our last volunteer canal clean up for for 2025.

6 volunteers came and joined me on Saturday afternoon on the Leeds Liverpool canal near Kirkstall, Leeds.
They pulled all manor of things out of the water, including a camping toilet, large seat cushion, bike tyre, the usual selection of cans and bottles but most surprisingly a complete, albeit very rusty, desktop PC!

These clean ups wouldn’t be possible without our volunteers, so if you’re interested in coming along and helping out on of our clean ups next year check out and we’ll see you there.

Busy getting up skilled on a Safeguarding Instructor course.

Level 1 and Level 3 Safeguarding for Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults courses will be available to book very soon.
Watch this space!

Unfortunately we have had to make the decision to suspend our Paddleboarding sessions for the time being, as our usual stretch of canal is unusable with an overgrowth of weeds and algae.

We hope that we get some steady rainfall soon to help refill and flush the canal system through, but until then no more SUP.

All our other activities including Climbing, Navigation Skills, Guided Hikes and First Aid Courses are still available to book through our website or directly through getting in contact with us.

See you on an adventure very soon.

(Photo from one of our previous volunteer canal clean ups)

We did a daddy daughter thing today 😆
Anyone guess the name of that hill? Answer in the comments ⛰️

Love to get outdoors and make a difference? Join us at our upcoming paddleboarding litter picks! 🛶💧🌍 No experience needed - we’ve got all the gear, just bring yourself along! https://planetpatrol.co/clean-ups/ 📍Lock Lane, Castleford | 23rd July 📍Dowley Gap Lane, Bingley | 26th July 🎟️ Sign up before it’s too late! #PaddleAndProtect #PlanetPatrol #GetOutside #SUP #EventsinYorkshire #MakeADifference #OnPlanetPatrol ☀️Castleford Community Paddlesports Club ☀️River and Dale Adventures

Two weeks today myself, Dean & Amy from Leeds Dock Paddle Boarding (Sup School) and a few others are going to be taking on the Caledonian Canal by SUP and other paddle craft.

This 100km journey across the width of Scotland, starting from Fort William and finishing in Inverness, will take us 4 days, carrying everything we need on our boards/boats and camping wild under the Scottish night sky.

We are all taking on this challenge with the goal to help raise money for my partner Anna, to help pay for her ongoing Cancer treatment that costs us thousands of pounds per month. NHS treatment has helped and continues to help us so far but unfortunately it isn’t enough, which has lead us to integrate additional treatment to help keep Anna with us as long as possible.

When I did my SUP against Cancer fundraiser in April of last year Anna had recently finished her Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy treatment and began her Hormone Therapy. All was looking good and the doctors were happy for us to get back to normal life. Fast forward two months and the hammer fell again.

Stage 4 cancer diagnosis, spread to the bones, average life expectancy 5 years!

We said no thank you to that and sought some extra help. Since November Anna has been visiting a private clinic who have:
* Sorted out her diet, helping her to lose over 6 stone in unnecessary weight since November, starving out the cancer and preventing it from growing further.
* Regular blood tests to monitor Anna’s inflammatory markers and adjust diet, exercise and drug protocols accordingly, helping the NHS drugs to do their jobs better.
* Gene, Gut and other tests to find out what foods Anna can and can’t eat, ones that cause inflammation and those that simply cannot be digested or absorbed properly.
* Hyperbaric Oxygen therapy once a week as cancer cells cannot survive in an Oxygen rich environment, not to mention a whole host of other health benefits that comes with it.
Thanks to that clinic Anna has never looked or felt healthier. She truly feels like she is beating this disease and is aiming to not only beat that 5 year average lifespan but see Eira, our beautiful three year old, finish School & College and even greet our first grandchild into this world.

If you can donate anything to the fundraiser, created by our friends over at Heckmondwike Tutors who Anna works for, then that will help more than you could ever know.

We look forward to this challenge but know it is nothing compared to the challenge of fighting stage 4 cancer.

Keep your eyes peeled for more updates and our journey once we are on our way.