Learn what to wear in any weather

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers

Setting up this activity

• Spread out all of the clothing and equipment in the centre of the meeting place.
• If there's not enough clothing for everyone to use, consider printing out pictures or writing the names of items on pieces of paper and put them in the middle of the room. 
• Create a list of scenarios or weather events that might be experienced during a hike or expedition. 

1. 1. Scenarios could include: A sunny day in the Peak District, winter walking in the Cairngorms, a night hike in spring on a beach in Devon or a walk from Brighton to Lewes. 
   2. Weather conditions could include: sun, rain, wind, snow and hailstones. Think about including different lengths of hike, with anything between a couple of hours and a two-day expedition.

• If you get a moment and have some old jeans and outdoor walking trousers lying around, soak both in water at the start of the session. Hang both pairs of trousers up to dry during the session. You can then come back to them at the end to show everyone how quickly they've dried.

Explaining the game

1. Gather everyone together in a circle.
2. Explain that everyone will be given a scenario for going walking or hiking. From the information given and from the equipment provided, they need to decide what they would wear. They'll be working in groups and two people from each group should run to the centre of the activity area to collect the equipment that they feel is suitable for use in that scenario. The two people will then need to take the equipment back to their group, where it should be laid out on the floor as it would be worn on a person.
3. Split everyone into four groups and have each one group go to a different part of the room or space.

Choosing the clothes

1. Give everyone their first scenario. Groups have two minutes to collect their equipment and dress/equip their imaginary person.
2. Start with a simple scenario, such as: ‘A sunny day hike in the Peak District’.
3. Each time the scenarios could get harder, but try to cover a variety of different conditions and times of year.
4. You could think about adding in changes part way through, such as: ‘A storm is building while you’re walking in the Yorkshire Dales in the middle of summer. What equipment do you need to protect yourself?’
5. When the two minutes is up, ask each group about what they've chosen and why.
6. When finished, everyone should put everything back into the middle of the room and give them the next scenario and repeat the process.
7. Each group should now send two different people to collect the gear from the centre of the activity area. They should continue to swap roles for each subsequent scenario so everyone gets a go.

Showing it in action

1. At the end of the session, if you prepared some earlier, check on the wet walking trousers and jeans. Demonstrate how the hiking trousers (should) have dried out over the course of the session, whereas the jeans will still be sodden, cold and very uncomfortable. Ask the group to see if anyone can explain why.