The school had a trip with Wilderness Outdoor Education to go gorge walking in Middleton in Teesdale. We were taken to a river near to an old lead mine.

After being kitted out in safety gear and wet suits we all had to get into the water. Of course it wasn't just a case of stepping in... Rob held on to our buoyancy aids at the front and tilted us backwards until we could fall into the river on our backs! As you can see from the photos we made some very big splashes.

Once we were all wet, it was time to start walking down the river. This wasn't an easy task as not only were there plenty of rocks on the river bed, there was also plenty of slippery algae. Most of us ended up falling over at some point.

When we reached a small waterfall it was time for the next challenge. We had to sit on the top and slide down to the bottom. It wasn't very high but for some it was quite scary.

Finally, we came to a much higher waterfall and Rob told us we were going to slide down it on a rope! Several children (and some of the adults) didn't think that they would be able to do this. However, once most of the children had successfully slid down and swum to the shore the rest of us followed.  When you got to the bottom of the waterfall, the water was so deep even the adults couldn't stand up!

We finished off by jumping in off the sides of the river and swimming around in the pool. It was then time to walk back up the road to the minibus and get into our warm, dry clothes and eat a belated lunch.