Inspirational Youngsters
1st Nov 2013
Now I've blogged about taking risks with kids before, and I've also blogged about getting kids into the outdoors. It's with great pleasure that tonight I am going to meet a whole host of young inspirational people from Derbyshire. As part of this year's Buxton Adventure Festival we've teamed up with our title sponsors the University Of Derby to put on the first ever Derbyshire Young Adventurers Awards - think BBC Sports Personality Of The Year on a (much) smaller scale, but aimed specifically at bikers, climbers, runners, sailors and other adventuresome types. With 4 days to go until the deadline we were in a bit of a flap as we'd had just one nomination, but by the time last Friday had passed we had 17! It's been an absolute joy reading their bios, though not such fun deciding who should win the three categories we decided upon: Young Adventurer, Young Leader and Spirit Of Adventure. To help us decide we recruited the services of three young adventurers already at the top of their games: Adela Carter, Stuart Bond and Pete Whittaker. Well we've now got our winners and I'm super excited to be meeting the majority of the nominees tonight at our awards ceremony where they'll pick up medals, trophies, and some outstanding prizes. The overall winner gets a 5 day expenses paid trip to the Alps with a friend to take part in the Adventure Racing World Championships, whilst the winners of the other two categories get an adventure day for themselves and 20 of their classmates at the Oaklands Outdoor Centre where th ceremony will take place tonight.
Am also particularly excited to be meeting the Meek Family and Dave Cornthwaite, our key note speakers for the evening. Dave is an adventurer extrodinaire who seems to have more energy than just about anybody I have ever come across - I am sure that energy will be infectious tonight. The Meeks are a local family with a mission which is not dissimilar to my own - only they've gone the extra step and documented it on a great website called http://www.dotrythisathome.com/. Check it out, if you're reading this Blog then it will be of interest to you, I am confident.
What with all these projects converging at the same time (Project Wild Thing officially launched a few days ago) it seems that we are at a tipping point, so this weekend whilst it's raining get yourselves down to the Buxton Adventure Festival, or if you can't, at least check out the Meeks's website and the Wild Time App, or do your own thing. Happy Adventuring.