Walk to Hightown, Liverpool, 26th Feb 2011

Another successful walk done. 

13 of us went to Hightown for a walk along the coast. After meeting at AiW for a quick coffee we jumped on the train and arrived in hightown to the sound of gunfire from the local army base (I hope). We set off for the coast and a walk along the sand in the cold and wind with the expectation of brighter spells later on in the day. Getting further into the walk I was suprised to see rather large bronze statues in the sand. No idea why they where placed their, but I am sure Chris would be able to tell us and it was rather amusing to see many of them with clothes on donated by eager sunbathers. A couple of us braved the quicksand conditions and wrecked our boots to get a couple close up pics.

After a stop off at the local swimming pool for a coffee the sun came out and we carried on the walk towards the train station along the public footpaths. At least that was the case for most of us with 3 (myself included) deciding to take the scenic route hurling ourselves from one sand dune to another while the others looked on. All in good fun. A quick treck through the town placed us nicely at the trainstation for a journy back to Hamilton Square. Another great walk and I can't wait for the next one which should be going out into North Wales. See you all on the next one.

Matt Williams

APEx Coordinator

Advocacy Physical Exercise

Why we are here......

Another month has gone by. Time for an update.

So where do we start. As you may remember we had a little setback when we last spoke. I am really pushing forward with this now. I am back to the running club every week, but still have my cinema in fortnightly. We had an interesting turnup last week. We got ourselves a new register sheet where we can keep track of our lap times. Not only did I do my first lap in 20 mins I did my second one in 19 mins after saying I was going to walk most of the lap.

Still going to Wirral Alcohol Service fortnightly. Got another 8 weeks of gym work, but I am enjoying this so far. Had a little endulge on Friday when I went to the pub, but hopefully this won't set me back to far. It's back to Vicky this week for a BMI, weight and general health check. Hopefully that will come back well and she won't notice the Friday alcohol.

It's been a while, but I have started the Thursday swimming session again. In addition to another walk on Tuesday from AiW it seems like I am keeping myself busy with exercise. I am even hoping to hear back soon about getting onto a college course, but I will see what is on offer first and let you all know what happens with this.

And on top of all this my mother still hasn't smoked in nearly 3 1/2 months.

All going quite well this month. Hopefully continue into next month when I can deliver an even better blog.

APEx new walk leaders.

With our members ever keen to boost their abilities three of our walkers have gained a walk leader qualification.

It has been on the table for a while. With APEx membership growing we have been in need of more volunteers with good qualifications that can help us keep our activities going strong. Tuesday gone Paul Carney, Keith Parnell and Matt Williams all went out to the Liverpool PCT to take part in an excellent walk leaders qualification. After a nice walk through the streets of Liverpool and some excellent classroom tuition all of use came away with a certificate making us walk leaders.

So whats next. There have been some ideas bounced around about walking and I have got a couple myself. Hopefully we are going to look at linking in with exisitng Advocacy in Wirral projects to get a lot of walking groups going and really help to get people on the right path to meeting their 30 minutes of exercise a day five days a week.

Matt Williams
Activities Coordinator

Running Group

 

Mondays 12:00 – 13:30 – AiW office Unit 66.

Wednesdays 16:45 – 18:00 – AiW office Unit 66

 

Walking Group

 

Thursdays 11:15 – 16:00 – Meet Terry Plant at the bus stops (stand 3) on Hamilton Square (opposite side of the square to the Town Hall next to the John Leird Statue). A day ticket for the bus/train is about £3.50

Monthly walking group will be in and around the first weekend of each month. I would suggest people wanting to go get in touch with me at the office for more details each month.

 

Swimming

 

Thursdays – 12:30 – 13:30 – People meet at Europa for about 12:30 then go swimming as a group. This group is about people taking part in swimming, but don’t want to go on their own.

 

We have also been piloting a swimming program where people pay £10 per session to take part in a 5 week swim program where they can learn to do the front crawl. This program is mid way through its third series and based on the success of it we will run another one soon after.

Yoga

 

Fridays – AiW office unit 66. We currently have two sessions on for this. The one running from 12:00 – 13:00 was the first one we set up, but due to popularity we set up another one from 13:00 – 14:00, which I dedicated to the womans group. Due to space restrictions anyone who wants to go on this will have to let me know in advance to ensure we don’t have over-crowding. We can add more sessions as and when we need to and I will keep you up to date as and when we do this.

 

Matt Williams

Activities Coordinator

Food for thought

Following on from the APEx committee meeting the barrel of ideas has been filled and its time to start pushing forward into 2011.

There is no doubt in my mind that APEx has graduated into a new position over the last 6 months. With a solid base of activities and an excellent group of members its time to push up the bar. What better way to push up that bar than to get a group of people together with professionals and service users alike and ask what they want/suggest. 

From here we have some excellent ideas for expanding the current projects we have in terms of the activity and the membership in addition to pushing through some new projects that we are now in a position to deliver to the standard we would expect. 

With all this its going to be a fun time to be involved in APEx so keep checking in here or on the AiW and Recovery Wirral websites and see for yourself all the new things that are going to kick off.

Matt
Activities Coordinator