Alfresco BBQ evening in the Deerhouse, Swinton Park, North Yorkshire. See your stag off in style with good food and a roaring fire in a restored hunting lodge. With views over the Yorkshire dales and your own  private bar, the deerhouse, which can seat from 20 to 50 people, is a setting fit for kings. To find out about the packages that can be put together click here.

Adventurers

Do a Hilary – Why not collectively follow in the footsteps of your  hero explorers, be they Fiennes, Hilary, Shackleton or Tenzsing Norgay.

3 Day Pyrenean Expedition. Learn the skills to become an intrepid explorer over three days spent adventuring round the Pyrenees with a professional explorer and hard man Mark Kalch – 3 days costs £295 (10 people max). For full details click here.

Your stag might even put his new knowledge to use one day by Climbing Everest. The expedition costs a cool $60,000, making it the absolute ultimate stag gift, requiring a mind boggling whip-round. Good news though; the stag’s oxygen tanks are thrown in free.

Educational Drinking…

Learn slick skills of a Cocktail barman - give your groom the ability to impress his new bride with sexy bar-room moves. Renowned bar school Shaker can put together a package for you for £60 pp in their London bar school in Shoreditch, £50 in Birmingham or £70 at a venue of your choice.

Brian: Should we let it breathe?
Doug: It hasn’t breathed for fifty years, it’s dead. Let’s just drink it.

(Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown, Cocktail, 1988)

Itinerary idea, London: What about an afternoon cocktail making session, followed by one of the best pizzas in town at relaxed Pizza East, then a night clubbing downstairs at Concrete, a wicked venue the boys will love. Enjoy big name DJs and watch someone else to make your cocktails.

Itinerary idea, Birmingham: Follow your cocktail making session with a curry at the Kashmir Cottage, Bearwood High Street - a tiny, no frills, old style balti restaurant known for outstanding food. Once digested and able to move on, head to the Factory in Digbeth – take note though, this venue is definitely more break beat and hip hop, baggy jeans and trainers than a shirts and shoes kinda place.

Beer Safari - Journey to Suffolk for the weekend for a guided day of hop farms, breweries and beer tasting. Culminating in dinner and a tasting at one of Suffolk’s leading gastropubs The Anchor at Walberswick. Which, by the way, has some rather nice bed and breakfast rooms for £55pp a night.

So why not spend Sunday on the beach with a picnic, playing beach football and damn building.

Alfresco BBQ evening in the Deerhouse, Swinton Park, North Yorkshire. See your stag off in style with good food and a roaring fire in a restored hunting lodge. With views over the Yorkshire dales and your own  private bar, the deerhouse, which can seat from 20 to 50 people, is a setting fit for kings. To find out about the packages that can be put together click here.

Adventurers

Do a Hilary – Why not collectively follow in the footsteps of your  hero explorers, be they Fiennes, Hilary, Shackleton or Tenzsing Norgay.

3 Day Pyrenean Expedition. Learn the skills to become an intrepid explorer over three days spent adventuring round the Pyrenees with a professional explorer and hard man Mark Kalch – 3 days costs £295 (10 people max). For full details click here.

Your stag might even put his new knowledge to use one day by Climbing Everest. The expedition costs a cool $60,000, making it the absolute ultimate stag gift, requiring a mind boggling whip-round. Good news though; the stag’s oxygen tanks are thrown in free.

Educational Drinking…

Learn slick skills of a Cocktail barman - give your groom the ability to impress his new bride with sexy bar-room moves. Renowned bar school Shaker can put together a package for you for £60 pp in their London bar school in Shoreditch, £50 in Birmingham or £70 at a venue of your choice.

Brian: Should we let it breathe?
Doug: It hasn’t breathed for fifty years, it’s dead. Let’s just drink it.

(Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown, Cocktail, 1988)

Itinerary idea, London: What about an afternoon cocktail making session, followed by one of the best pizzas in town at relaxed Pizza East, then a night clubbing downstairs at Concrete, a wicked venue the boys will love. Enjoy big name DJs and watch someone else to make your cocktails.

Itinerary idea, Birmingham: Follow your cocktail making session with a curry at the Kashmir Cottage, Bearwood High Street - a tiny, no frills, old style balti restaurant known for outstanding food. Once digested and able to move on, head to the Factory in Digbeth – take note though, this venue is definitely more break beat and hip hop, baggy jeans and trainers than a shirts and shoes kinda place.

Beer Safari - Journey to Suffolk for the weekend for a guided day of hop farms, breweries and beer tasting. Culminating in dinner and a tasting at one of Suffolk’s leading gastropubs The Anchor at Walberswick. Which, by the way, has some rather nice bed and breakfast rooms for £55pp a night.

So why not spend Sunday on the beach with a picnic, playing beach football and damn building.

Do they put the fear of god into me? – yes a little.

Is it a good idea?  -  probably. It’s really not that expensive to do, £84 for an 8 week course of group personal training, am I coming round to the idea … yes, but no, but, (actually that was just a twirl I did in my swivel chair).

Ok,  I’m am getting into the idea… Imagine the possibilities – your body, a finely tuned machine of a thing – all toned and beautiful and ready for the summer…

Really, is this possible? Quite possible apparently and exactly the offer that Live Fit put on the table for you.

(Note to self and others – turns out you do actually have to get up off whatever lovely sofa/ swivel chair(that’s me)/ floor mat you are currently perched on and do it, although I am feeling a little slimmer just sitting here thinking about not eating cake)

Live Fit’s group personal training package includes exercise and nutrition services in one go. And they seriously emphasise more the importance of combing the two to get the best results.

What’s this? So I can exercise and eat at the same time? Brilliant stuff (do you think people know?) Right, running machine, you, me and the wotsits, right now!

Live Fit’s 8 week course costs £84, offering 16 training sessions – sounds good huh?

They seem like an excellent bunch of people and actually why not? Eating sandwiches, going running and stripping fat sounds good to us. You can find out more, ask Live Fit a question or even just book the thing here.

If you want to find personal training, boot camps or something more traditionally fun, like belly dancing going on locally, find it on Ooh.com.

Scott Laidler and Victor Analuwa are two of London’s top personal trainers and they’ll be sure to put you through your fat-burning paces at these popular classes.

What’s so good about Fit Box?

• Fit Box Boot Camp neutralizes your stress, causing your fat hormones to “shut down” so you’ll stop storing fat, especially in your stomach, hips and thighs.
• Fit Box Boot Camp combines cardio, weights abs and kickboxing techniques all into one workout… You’ll save time by burning fat, toning muscle and getting a flat stomach all at once.
• You get the fat melting benefits of cardio while having fun, and you avoid boring gym machines.
• Scott and Victor say you’ll lose up to 6lbs of fat and drop a dress size in the first 2 weeks. That’s a lot of easter chocolate shifted.

Where and when?

Classes take place all over London – currently running in Primrose Hill, Battersea Park, Wandsworth Park/Putney and Maida Vale. Classes last 45 minutes and are held 3 times a week for 4 weeks.

How much?

A skinny £99 for the four week course.

To find out more or book your place, click here.

Don’t forget, if you run courses, classes, workshops and events, you can list them on Ooh.com for free. Just register and start uploading your listing. It’s that easy!

So what inspired Cope to start BMF? “I set up British Military Fitness in 1999 to offer the public an alternative to lycra-clad aerobic classes which were then all the rage! I felt nothing was motivational and nothing really encouraged you. Bearing in mind I was in the army, I thought there was potential to get people to exercise outside with a military theme.”

Larger venue sessions can attract an average of 180 members at a time. What makes them so sought after? “Our sessions are great fun and also a chance to meet new people, which doesn’t always happen in a gym! We’ve had 13 marriages over the last 10 years from people meeting through our sessions. Our instructors guide individuals through the 60 minute classes ensuring that all exercises are performed safely while providing motivation and encouragement for the participants. The classes are an effective, varied way of training and promote group interaction through paired exercises and team activity.”

This emphasis on proper training outside, in a team, rather than indoors, alone is clearly a more socially fulfilling activity. Does the social aspect extend beyond the training session? “We run social events at each BMF venue which can range from drinks in the pub to days out paintballing etc. We also have an events department that runs 5Km & 10Km races, challenges to Borneo and social weekends away.”

So, it seems BMF is more fun than the gym, better for you, and better value. The best thing about British Military Fitness for Major Cope? “Knowing that the business we run is helping people to live active and healthy lifestyles.” If you can’t imagine the manager of your local chain gym saying that to you, maybe it’s worth checking out. Find out more about BMF and become a member at www.britmilfit.com.

Emma left a stressful career in the film industry to freedive upon learning of its availability in the UK.  However, whilst there was a facility at which she could dive, there was no formal training organisation to maintain quality of training and safety. 

“There wasn’t an organised and recognised education system and so a group of us in the UK got together to make a series of courses that could be taught. I was keen that people learn how to enjoy freediving safely to teach a generation how to do it properly and avoid dangerous diving. I was then one of the founding members of the AIDA Education Commission who took the course materials and expanded them worldwide.”

Having competed nationally and internationally between 2003 and 2006, coming 3rd in the 2003 UK Championships, 3rd in the 2006 Swiss Championships and 2nd in the 2004 Kalymnos International Championships despite being the only female in the competition, Emma’s passion lies in tuition – “Teaching is way more important to me than competing! I really struggled when I started freediving and I love being able to help people learn and avoid all the mistakes I made!”

As well as being a freediving author, and having chaired the British Freediving Association, Emma frequently appears in magazines and on television.  Whilst she may be whisked to glamorous locations, the realities of these trips are sometimes a little different – “It may appear to be glamorous but beautiful images and locations can be deceiving! I did a photo shoot for my book in Monaco and got very badly stung by a jellyfish that scarred my hand for a few years. I also did a TV commercial where I was so cold that I became violently ill for a week! Teaching in the United Arab Emirates last year was about teaching in a sea of jellyfish and then an oil slick which took 3 hours in a shower with a bottle of detergent to get rid of. Saying that, I have done some beautiful dives in Greece and the UK when teaching courses so that helps to make up for it!”

Emma runs a variety of courses in the UK and offers freediving holidays at a summer school in Greece.  For more information, visit www.emma-freediver.co.uk or www.deeperblue.com.

Photos used with the kind permission of Simon Reid.

Nowadays Rob lives in the Black Mountains and believes the finest road cycling in Britain is in the Brecon Beacons National Park, which is why he’s started a business offering road cycling training weekends. The weekends are designed for fairly serious wheelers – those who are in training for major cyclosportive events like the Etape du Tour, the Marmotte or one of the Gran Fondos in Italy, and have an urgent need to get some serious hill-climbing into their legs.

Rob’s ethos is: ride hard, eat well and sleep deeply.  We went to meet him and were struck by how passionate he is about cycling; even after so many miles under his belt.  When Rob imparts a piece of cycling wisdom, one takes it seriously: he learned his craft the hard way, alone, over three years and in the ten years since his return from his world trip.  We love the fact that anyone can tap into his great resource of knowledge in such beautiful surroundings and convivial company for only a few hundred dollars.

A couple of days with Rob will be tough, exhilarating, stimulating and will prepare folk for the biggest ride of their lives.  For more info, email info@uketapetraining.co.uk.