On Saturday the 23rd we went to Wild Pines Park in Market Rasen to do a team building day filled with axe throwing, bushcraft, survival skills and more!
“Team building is a big priority for us at Rapid. Our team works really hard for our customers so it’s great for them to get to let off some steam, but also to get to know each other better and learn some interesting skills while we’re at it.” – Karl Hedison, Technical Director
The Team Building Day
Fire Lighting
The day started with a talk on the steps you should follow in a survival situation and in what order you should find safety, location, water, and food. Jim, our guide, also had some tips about where we can find antiseptic in nature and tree sap you can fill your tooth with if you lost a filling.
Then he taught us to light fires, first with firesteels, then with a chemical reaction, then with a traditional flint & steel. Along the way he explained various ways we could use things from nature as fuel for the fire and how we could keep the fire going longer.
Bushcraft
We started this portion of the day by learning some safety guidelines to follow when using the knives then got started on sawing a piece of holly wood in half. After learning some woodworking techniques while making one half into a tent peg, we were ready to make the other half into a knife (so you can protect your sharp knives in a survival situation). Karl, Technical Director, has the best knife because he used one of the techniques from the tent peg to make the handle more defined.
Cooking
Now it was time for some dinner. We gathered around the campfire part of the site and after a quick tutorial began making flour and water into flatbreads. The site was dedicated to being rustic, with a camping shower to wash our hands and heating the kettle over the fire like in I’m A Celebrity: Get Me Out Of Here. We had 3 firepits (separate to our main fire) where we used our new skills to light our own fire and cook our flatbreads, sausages, and burgers. After the main course we used some chocolate digestives & marshmallows to make smores!
Axe Throwing
After some safety precautions had been explained we started by throwing some small throwing axes, aiming to work upwards to size & weight. These were quite hard despite their size as their lack of weight meant that it was entirely down to skill as their weight wouldn’t propel them in the same way it would the bigger axes.
After several rounds of this we upgraded to some standard tool box hatchet axes. These we all agreed were the nicest to throw despite not being intended as throwing axes. The weight was quite evenly distributed and the straight blade made it easier to lodge them into the target. With each upgrade in size we stepped further back.
Next was the tomahawks. We were quite excited for these but ultimately preferred throwing the hatchets. The tomahawks were top heavy (throwing us off a little) and the curved blade meant that only the top half could actually become lodged in the target.
We ended the day with a competition. We each threw every axe, getting a number of points depending on how close to the target’s bullseye each one got. While Darren, Financial Director, had overall gotten more consistent bullseyes during the earlier throws – Michelle, Lead Travel Advisor, won with 32 points!
“My favourite part was definitely the axe throwing. I loved that it was something new to attempt and I might possibly carry on with it as a hobby.” – Sarah, Travel Advisor
“I liked that I got to know people a bit more, such as that Michelle was good at Javelin when she was a kid, which might be why she was good at the axe throwing.” – Athina, Travel Advisor