Saturday is Changeover Day when last week's guests take off in the morning and the new teams arrive in the afternoon, in time for dinner and the Welcome Pool Party. It is a day without official programme, just cleaning the pool hall and any dirty adventure clothing belonging to the centre, and check all the showers.

Army clothes were available from the drying room, to avoid getting our own kit dirty on some of the jobs. These outfits were actually quite comfy on top of shorts and t-shirts. Ponchos were also available for some of the wet jobs, so we put those on as well.

Andy and James joined the team who tidied the pool hall, put all the furniture and boats were the belonged. That kept them busy for a while.

Cleaning the Adventure Kit

Giovanni and I were asked to rinse adventure gear that was left dirty after some muddy events, mostly waterproof pants and anoraks or cagoules. We put them all into a big plastic basket and headed into the yard which has a big hose pipe.

"How are we getting these clean?" I asked Giovanni.

"We can either rinse them in the lake or use the hose pipe." he replied with a big grin.

"But there is only one hose pipe." I added.

"No problem. You hold the clothes up and I hose them down. Then we take turns. Easy." Giovanni obviously knew what was best and I slowly understood why we were wearing ponchos.

We tipped the basket out to have room for the clean clothes. I picked up a long anorak and Giovanni sprayed it (and me) until it was clean. Then I put it into the basket and picked up the next item.

The poncho kept me fairly dry for a good while above the knees. Below my pants, socks and shoes were soaked. Because of the way Giovanni handled the hose pipe, water eventually started to came in through the collar and began to soak the front of my clothes. No problem. I expected that anyway.

The hose pipe had a leak near the nozzle, so Giovanni's poncho was getting wet too. After we swapped over, I hosed him down from top to bottom. He just loved that, but he was still dry inside. It took me quite some effort to get him a wet around the top.

Soon we were done, took all the kit back into the drying room and hung it up on the racks. We got quite hot in our ponchos and finally hung them up too. Turned out we were both somewhat damp, but not really wet. We headed back to the pool hall to find out about our next task.

Joey wanted us to check out all the showers, make sure they worked, had clean heads and the temperature controls worked. He explained that we should simply turn them on, check the water flow is good and test for both hot and cold water.

We went to the shower room where I stood next to the first shower and turned it on, holding just my hand in to feel the temperature. Mark was new and watched me, since he's never done this before.

"That's how wimps do it!" said Giovanni with a laugh. "You're supposed to step right under it so you can feel the temperature right. Turn it hot, turn it cold, check the flow."

He turned on a shower, turning the temperature knob and soaking the front his green uniform. Then he moved on to the next shower. Moments later he was dripping wet and looked really happy. Then he shoved Mark into the shower until he was all wet. Mark looked puzzled.

So I stepped into the next shower, tried it hot then cold and checked the flow. The hot and cold contrast was very exciting. The wet clothes made the hot and cold less extreme, but it was still very intense.

Andy and James appeared in the shower room to help with the testing. Since they were still mostly dry and felt hot from poolside work, they really enjoyed the refreshing shower. It looked great as they gradually got wetter the more showers they checked out.

After we've thoroughly tried all 20 showers, we went back to the pool hall. Joey said we were all done and the place was ready for the new guests.

"Your clothes look all wet." Joey commented. "How did that happen?" We just smiled. "Oh well," Joey said, "you might as well go for a swim then."

Without hesitation we dived into the pool and enjoyed a good while splashing around in our green uniforms. I put the poncho back on to keep warm. After a while most of the others fetched their ponchos too for chilling out in the shallow end. We sat shoulder deep in a circle, talking about the weeks events.

Mark said this was all new to him, looking at his billowing poncho in the water. Before he came here he had never soaked his clothes on purpose. He never thought is was so much fun. Now he was hooked.

It started to rain heavily. I opened the window a bit to let in the beautiful fragrance of the wet forest. "This is great," I pondered, looking out into the rain, "We'll get wet every day and even gaid paid for it. Amazing."

"Fancy a quick run?" Giovanni asked, waking me from my day dream. He tossed me a tee-shirt and rather baggy cargo pants to wear under the poncho. Soon we got going.

As we went out the rain got heavier. It ran down our ponchos and quickly soaked our cargo pants below the knees.

Soon we put our hoods down after a while as we got a bit hot from all that running. It was exciting to feel the rain water run into the collar, soaking the tee-shirt.

By the time we arrived at the lake we were fairly wet and waded waist deep into the water. It felt nice, but rather cold in only these thin clothes. I ducked under for a moment but soon got out.

"Let's go for a swim!" Giovanni shouted.

"No way," I protested, "way too cold."

"I mean in the indoor pool." he laughed.

"What? In a poncho?" I said puzzled. "Is that safe?"

"Yes, if you know what you're doing." He showed me how to fit the button on the bottom front of the poncho to the back button between my legs. That kept the poncho from going over my head in a wind or when swimming. "Army ponchos have a waist band to do the same trick." he expained.

"Come on, let's go." We ran up to the pool and asked the lifeguard who was tidying up if we could go for a swim. He gave us a bemused look and said: "Sure, just take a shower first."

Wow, what an amazing feeling this was in the showers. First I had the hood up and very little water came into the poncho. As I put the hood down it all came gushing in. The warm water made the nylon really soft.

The sun had come out and was shining through the roof lights into the empty pool; no guests were there because it was changeover day.

Then we entered the shallow end of the pool, played around a bit and went for a relaxing swim. The feeling of the loose fabric floating around me was unbelievable. It felt liberating.

A poncho is quite easy to swim in which surprised me. It just hugs your body as you move along. When you stay in one spot it floats around you as you play with it. The baggy pants and tee-shirt went well with this.

After our swim we relaxed on the sunny poolside to let the ponchos dry a bit before we went back to the room.

"Well, what do you think?" asked Giovanni.

"That was amazing, so easy. We should do that again sometime." I said with a big smile. "Right away." said Giovanni as we headed for the shower in our room to rinse the chlorine out. A good soapy lather and rinse after a swim really feels good. Then we got dressed for the next adventure.