There has been increasing interest in recent years in the significance of a sense of place in the literature of outdoor adventure education. In the UK relationships between outdoor education and the environment still appear largely focused on the science of the natural environment and the activity in question. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from an action research project to demonstrate how a combination of formal and informal pedagogy in a higher education context can lead to a sociocultural and historical understanding of place and enrich the learning experience of students when teaching the classical outdoor adventurous activity of sailing. The sport of dinghy sailing is a module within a Bachelor's undergraduate degree in outdoor education and was taught from a small fishing town in Devon, England. We adopted an integrated and experiential critical pedagogy of place that allowed theory and practice, thought and action to be a holistic experience, and this approach provided opportunities for informal, as well as formal learning. This action research project explored the impact on the student experience when sailing skills were developed along with a sense of place. It used methods including: photo-elicitation, focus group interviews and evidence from the analysis of written student assignments. Our findings show that students discover a significance of the meaningful relationship between the sociocultural history of where that activity takes place and the activity itself and that as a result their experience of the learning and research process was enriched.