“Wild & Active is a ticket to a great summer away, if you like the outdoors and all types of wildlife then this job should appeal to you. Your role is to take your customers on walks and to activities in the surrounding area close to your site.

Training was at the Berny Riviere site near Paris, most of the three full days was specific training for Wild & Active. The best sessions were when we went out walking in the local area, once we were led on a wildlife walk and on the other we had to design and lead our own wildlife walk. On one of the evenings we learnt how to take customers on a bat walk. On the training course we saw species you cannot see at home in England, I was excited to see wild boar and red squirrel, and the middle spotted woodpecker and black woodpecker.

Wildlife walks are the most common activity in your programme, these are mostly planned with the whole family in mind. Some walks that start from the site gates, as these are brilliant for evening strolls, you’ll also want to show the customers more spectacular scenery or other types of wildlife you’ll have to arrange for the customers to bring their cars and drive in convoy.

The activity trips are great for the customers, and were brilliant fun for me. The most popular activity on my site was canoeing, there are lots of reasons why it better to go on a Canvas organised trip than going on their own, they get group discount, I’ve risk assessed it, they won’t get lost on the way, I’d book them in, they might make friends with other customers and I’d point out interesting wildlife en-route.

Kids Club, you run a couple of on sessions each week just for the children. The sessions have a wildlife theme, and are based on site at your Wild & Active tent. You are given a handbook with lots of session ideas in it. Kids Club is great fun and if you do good sessions, the children will be trying to persuade their parents to take them on other sessions.

Overall, I’d recommend this job to anyone who has a good knowledge of European wildlife and enjoys walking. You will be lucky enough to meet customers who will be wildlife experts, it is important to enjoy having them with you, and get as much information out of them as you can.

The unpredictably of wildlife makes the job what it is, some days you’ll do a walk and you’ll see nothing that you hoped to see, some days you’ll be out with your customers and see everything and more you hoped to, its these days that are great, a customer’s reaction when they see an exciting species they really wanted to see in the wild for the first time is very satisfying.

Have a good season and enjoy Wild & Active.