Just back from the Ridge Climbing wall at Swindon, attending the first NICAS seminar. The day was spent looking at the potential links between the coaching schemes currently under development at MLT and how coaching fits into the higher leveal awards in NICAS. There was a short practical session led by Martin Chester from Plas Y brenin on the fundamentals of coaching which was good to get people moving on the wall itself.

Afternoon workshops on teaching leading to under 16s, developing longer-term teaching and lesson plans for younger climbers, the links from NICAS to GCSE and other exam boards, and finally the role of the Technical Adviser in the NICAS scheme. This is the workshop that I was asked by NICAS to lead on and it threw up some interesting and lively discussions that will be fed into the overall report back from this series of autumn seminars that we are delivering to NICAS providers and Technical Advisers.