'We call it the Leap of Faith,' said the instructor, pointing to what looked like a telegraph pole with a trapeze dangling from a wire nearby. The idea, he explained, was that the child stands atop the pole and launches into the air, grabbing the trapeze on their way. As you do.
It occurred to me that this whole activity holiday business was something of a leap of faith. It sounded wonderful: Isle of Wight, seaside location; 'a special experience for every child', allowing them to 'develop new interests and explore new challenges'. Hmm. Challenges. Trouble is, our son is not a great one for challenges.
'List any medical problems or special needs we should know about in relation to your child,' the form had said. How about congenital timidity, an almost clinical lack of co-ordination and a pathological fear of anything new that might be 'hard'?
'Look, they offer dragon boating and 'aquafun' in their own pool...' Aidan, our eight-year-old, requires a major bribe to do even a width at the shallow end without putting his foot down. 'They go mountain biking...' Said son cycles a wobbly couple of laps of our street before begging to be allowed to put his bike away. Maybe the presence of a couple of friends would spur him on. No child wants to lose face in front of mates - especially if one's a girl. 'We're going to Canada next week,' Laura, my five-year-old daughter, had announced to the playground in general a few weeks earlier. 'Little Canada,' I hastened to add, as a couple of other parents looked impressed. 'It's on the Isle of Wight.'
The company that runs Little Canada, and a similar centre at Osmington Bay in Dorset, recently changed its name from Superchoice to 3D. Why 3D? No one seemed to know - though timid son thought the admonition that no one was allowed on the trampoline without a 3D instructor meant the instructor had to be there in the flesh: a two-dimensional picture of one would not do.
A flock of these multi-dimensional instructors made themselves available the minute we arrived and bore the kids away to view their 'common room' and bag bunks in their respective chalets, successfully dissolving any worries with their bubbly enthusiasm.
Well, if you were eight years old, who would you rather hang out with on holiday? Parents way the wrong side of 30 who occasionally like to sit in one place and read a newspaper? Or bouncy 23-year-olds who are still on for bopping with you at the evening disco after spending all day shepherding you from rock climbing to low ropes to circus skills?
And one of these really fun grown-ups even stays with you all night. Forget chilly dormitories and rows of washbasins: at 3D camps, under-10s sleep six to a centrally heated chalet, each with en suite facilities; there's a separate bedroom for an instructor, on hand to make sure teeth are brushed and to deal with any nightmares.
In fact it probably wouldn't matter how luxurious the accommodation was or wasn't. By the time your day has included, perhaps, abseiling, archery, canoeing, 'aeroball' (a cross between basketball and trampolining - particularly popular with Lauren, aged eight) and an after-dinner scavenger hunt, and you've made time for pillow fights, 'midnight' feasts and a healthy dose of talking after lights-out - which unconscious child is going to notice how comfortable their bed is?
This place has been called Little Canada ever since the Twenties, when a New Zealander called Howarth, struck by the beauty of the ancient woodland running down to a stony creek, had the idea of adding log cabins - probably one of the country's earliest holiday camps. Whether he had ever actually visited Big Canada, no one knows. By coincidence, Canadian troops were billeted in those same cabins during the Second World War and used the nearby Woodside Bay - now the scene of the children's Tuesday night campfire sessions - to practise for the D-Day landings. Today's chalets are all suitably named: our troop were sleeping in St Lawrence, and would head up past Newfoundland and Saskatchewan for dinner. And Aidan? You could almost say it was the making of him. Ten-pin bowling was 'brilliant'. Popmobility was 'embarrassing but I did it'. And 'Jacob's ladder' - an 'initiative' course (no assault courses any more) that involved getting all members of your team across an obstacle course using only a 10ft ladder - was 'hard, but cool: we found this really neat trick'. But coolest by far was The Matrix, a specially built version of TV's The Crystal Maze. Children solve puzzles to make their way through a series of four themed rooms: the office ('a prehistoric office, Mummy, from when they didn't have computers'), the Wild West Saloon, the Victorian haunted house and the spaceship. The whole lot is presided over by a 'Master' complete with floor-length purple velvet cloak. 'I can't tell you any of the answers, Mummy, because I would have to shoot you.'
There is also tunnelling, fencing, quad-biking and orienteering. The 'croc swamp' takes a game all children play - that one where your sitting room is a lake of piranhas, and every cushion in the house is pressed into service as a stepping stone - and makes it more exciting. Small wooden platforms take the place of your sofa cushions, and the kids use a short plank to traverse trickier sections. A thin rain falling steadily from a very English sky did not dampen the collective enthusiasm.
Really inclement weather would mar a child's summer camp experience, though indoor facilities such as a climbing wall, tunnel trail, swimming pool and IT labs would ensure the holiday was not ruined.
Which takes us back to that leap of faith. 'High ropes' - half a dozen 40ft-high poles linked by walkways, trapezes and zip wires - is one activity that would be made unacceptably dangerous by heavy rain, even though the children are securely harnessed and helmeted before ascending. How Aidan would handle it was a matter of intense interest. The zip wire involves leaping from the top of the highest pole, travelling 70ft to a spot on a tree some way away, then bouncing back to the lowest point before abseiling to the ground. The boy had clearly taken some persuading. 'I was sitting there on the platform and Dave said to shuffle forward, so I did. And then he pushed me.' The descent takes just a couple of seconds, but it was long enough for his anguished 'aarrgh' to turn into a triumphant 'yee-hah'.
It was only on the way home that we realised how all-consuming Little Canada had been. Like almost every male in the developed world who is over five but under five feet, the boys of our party are Pokémon crazy. Yet it was not until Portsmouth was well behind us and we had almost hit the M25 that Zapdos, Geodude and Pikachu reared their ugly (well, they are) heads. Nature trail, quiz and dragon boat had done what everyday life could not: relegate the exploits of Ash and Team Rocket to their proper place. Children can go on full seven-night holidays to Little Canada - a useful summer holiday solution for working parents; Osmington Bay also offers four-night stays - or they can opt for individual Adventure Days if they live, or are on holiday, nearby. This may seem an attractive way of offering your kids exciting activities without bidding them goodbye for a whole week, but I suspect it would be a tame version. However absorbing the sports and games, the real fun lies in the no-mum-or-dad camaraderie of the dormitory, in - for the boys at least - sitting up late giggling about 6ft willies and making up 'poems' about diarrhoea.
It is probably a long way from what the upstanding Mr Howarth had in mind, but given the state of my son's sponge bag after the holiday - soap and flannel in the same pristine state in which they had gone in - I must conclude that ' mens filthy in corpore even filthier ' would be a fair motto for summer camp.
• 3D Education and Adventure Ltd, Little Canada Centre, New Road, Wootton, Isle of Wight. www.3d-education.co.uk. Tel: 0870 607 7733. A seven-night summer camp stay costs £314 per child.
