Conservative Party leader William Hague literally took the plunge in Cornwall yesterday at the start of his meet the people tour of Britain.
Casually dressed Mr Hague braved a steep water slide at Flambards theme park near Helston on the Lizard - Three Men in a Boat style.
He crammed into a craft with deputy chief of staff Seb Coe, newly appointed Cornwall party spokesman David Harris - and all three got a soaking at the foot of the drop.
As he toured the theme park in the pouring rain, Mr Hague was wearing an anorak, open neck shirt and casual trousers, together with a personalised baseball cap with the words Hague on the front and ''A fresh future'' on the back.
He dismissed the notion that the future looked bleak for his party in Cornwall.
The Conservatives lost their three Parliamentary seats in the county at the last General Election and Cornwall is now represented in the Commons by four Liberal Democrats and a Labour MP.
But Mr Hague said: ''I think that makes it a very good place to start.''
He said: ''The Conservative party has got to do a lot of listening to people over the coming months.
''I'm going to do a great deal of that during the summer recess, and Cornwall is an excellent place to start.''
Mr Hague said the tourism, fishing and farming industries were already disillusioned with the Labour government.
Even in the first few months of the Labour Government Cornwall looked ''an extremely good prospect'' for the Conservatives.
Later yesterday Mr Hague was to visit the RNLI centre at Falmouth and watch an air-sea rescue demonstration from a lifeboat. He was to end the day watching a surf life saving exhibition at Portreath on the north coast.
Today Mr Hague will visit a fisheries protection vessel in Penzance.
During the first leg of his two month meet-the-people tour of the UK, Mr Hague said it was important for political leaders to be in touch with the people and ''not live in a bubble''.
He went on: ''It is crucial to speak to hundreds of people across the UK to hear what their concerns are and to see what is going on in the country.
''You have to see things with your own eyes.''
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