June Newsletter: Adventure Oban Gets Set for Summer!

This is the June edition of a newsletter that everyone on the Adventure Oban mailing list receives at the start of every month. Fill in the very simple form at this link to sign up to get Adventure Oban news, updates and future plans straight to your inbox!

Here Comes Summer!

Another month has whizzed by since our last update - and what a month it’s been! Here’s a quick recap of what Adventure Oban and One Million Miles got up to during May as well as some of the highlights of what we’ve got coming up.

One Million Miles Beach Clean

We kicked off the first of our organised beach cleans on the 15th May with a weekend of group litter-picks along coastal areas in and around Oban. We had over 40 volunteers join us, collecting over a tonne of plastics, marine waste and other pollutants from sites including Loch Feochan, Gallanach, Loch Feochan, Ganavan, North Connel and Loch Etive. 

We’ve found that organised beach cleans like this gives us the motivation to get rid of some chunkier marine litter that requires a real team effort. For example, this month we managed to pick up an old knackered dinghy, a mattress, a couple of shopping trolleys and even a fridge! We’re going to organise more cleans throughout the year to keep raising awareness about the impact of marine waste and continue to instil litter-picking as a positive habit in our community.

H2O Memento Box | Cairns

Local youth work charity Hope2Oban dedicated May’s instalment of their Memento Box project to helping raise some miles for One Million Miles. Memento Box is a digital project that sees H2O youth workers lead primary school children through a range of exploratory issues each month. The month concentrated on getting outside into nature. H2O Lead Youth Worker Daniel Rimmer explained how One Million Miles helps to frame activities for young people: 

“With Covid restrictions making it difficult to deliver youth work in-school, One Million Miles has been great for getting alongside young people outdoors. Memento Box’s Cairns project is really useful for helping to get the young people talking and understanding a little more about nature and appreciating the stunning surroundings that we live in. The young people have really taken to heart the idea that cairns represent milestones and important moments - recognising the resilience they had to find to get through this past turbulent year and being proud that doing so has become their very own milestone achievement.”

Find out more about H2O and Memento Box by clicking this link: Memento Box by H2O

Adventure Oban: The Charity!

May brought a significant milestone in the life of Adventure Oban: we are now a registered charity! Our application to OSCR (the charity regulator for Scotland) has just been approved. 

Being a charity affects how Adventure Oban works in a number of important ways. The activities we run and the way in which we operate as an organisation are now regulated by OSCR - this helps to further embed our commitment to public and community benefit in everything that we do. We’re also now able to access funding that we wouldn’t have been able to apply for otherwise which will open more doors for Adventure Oban as we start our journey.

Lifetime Membership - for just £5

Did you know you can become a lifetime member of Adventure Oban? We’re a membership-based, community company and anyone can join as a member. We’ve now got all our systems set up to allow us to process memberships and for just £5 you can be a member for life. 

With an active and engaged membership, Adventure Oban can hear more from the community and therefore do more for the community. If you’d like to become a member - head over to the Get Involved page on our website, fill in the simple form and we’ll do the rest.

Coming Up:

Hill Skills

This month, we’re teaming up with Wee Walk Oban, Oban Mountain Rescue and Hebridean Pursuits to run the first of our Hill Skills sessions. This is a great resource if you’re just starting out exploring the stunning hills and routes that Oban sits right in the middle of. This first session takes the form of an online webinar, kicking off on the 2nd of June at 7pm.
Head on over to the Eventbrite page to sign up and find out more info: Hill Skills Eventbrite Page

Water Safety

We’re partnering with Scottish Sea Farms, the RNLI and RNLI Oban along with Argyll and Bute Council to offer a water safety programme to support all water users in the area. As an initial part of this, Scottish Sea Farms donated 35 tow floats to the Adventure Library earlier this month. Tow floats are an important part of a swimmer’s kit, helping you to be seen in the water.
Keep an eye out for future events, talks and materials coming soon as we continue to design the support together.

Adventure Library

We’re still busy behind the scenes setting up the Adventure Library. The library will make it easier for our community to access expensive outdoor kit. Much like a conventional lending library, members will be able to check pieces of equipment out for short periods of time before returning them for others to use. 
Throughout May, we prepared our inventory and took stock of the generous donations we’ve already received - this includes some of the wetsuits that were previously used at Kilbowie.  
Keep an eye on the Library’s Page on our website for more information.

One Million Miles | Top Tips

Here’s a few handy hints to help you when heading out to log activity for One Million Miles:

1. Log your Strava miles. We’ve realised not everyone knew that the Strava group doesn’t automatically update your miles! You need to log them separately at adventureoban.org/onemillionmiles. 

2. Add One Million Miles to your phone’s home screen. Click the 3 dots on your phone browser of choice and choose ‘add to home screen’ to create a shortcut that makes it even easier to log your miles!

3. Take Miltean on an adventure. Miltean had a really busy May - he was up Cruachan, on Tiree (via Mull), went to visit Easdale Primary, stopped in to go adventuring with Rockfield Primary, Dunbeg Primary AND Park Primary - and lots more! But, he’s got energy for much more so if you’d like to take Miltean on an adventure send an email to hello@adventureoban.org or DM us on Facebook or Instagram.

As ever, we’ve got lots going on each week, so keep in touch via this website and all the Adventure Oban social media channels.
Here’s to Adventure!