In the morning we started off with an early knock on our door around 6:30am, as we were on duty (serve and wash up breakfast). Whilst cleaning up, Megan decided it would be a good idea to pick up two glasses stuck together, thinking it was one making the bottom one fall of and smash. As we did our cutlery dance, Ms Hodgett watched in amusement. We gathered our kit for the day, then realised that none of it actually fitted in our bag, putting all our energy for the day into squeezing it all in. On our journey to Conwy valley, which was a 40 minute drive in a minibus we saw some amazing views either side of us. Although the weather looked sunny, there was still snow on the mountains. We got out the minibus and the banter (less banter more bullying) was already beginning between Mr White and Megan about not being able to count to 3 (joke from the day before) Once we reached Afon Ddu (Afon meaning river, Ddu meaning black, The black river) we stepped into the water in our wellies which were a bit too big for us, Beccy decided to splash everyone. After a while we had to leap from a high rock onto a vertical slippery rock about a meter away. Next was ‘The Elephants Bum’ where we were pulling ourselves up a mini waterfall whilst being attacked by Mr White’s photo when we had to climb through some rocks very close together and the only way we could fit through was to look up were the camera was. Mary (our group leader) then told us the only the thing we want to hear when you’re in a freezing cold river… ‘You’re going to have to swim across’. It was cold. We carried on up into the gorge trying to walk with our wellies that were full with freezing cold water making them almost impossible to walk in. We soon realised that Beccy’s waterproof trousers had a huge rip in them right where the top of her wellies were which is really helpful when walking in a river  We had to walk across a fast flowing waterfall so when we put out our hands for balance all the water splashed in our faces which was obviously the perfect opportunity for Mr White to take some extremely hot mug shots, again, as per usual. Shortly after we came to ‘The Big Daddy Waterfall’ we were told we could go have a look, Olly being Olly clueless as ever thought this meant hey just jump in. He was wrong. As soon as he came up the first thing he said was ‘Ouch I hit my bum’ as everyone burst in to laughter and Olly, of course was confused why everyone was laughing at him. Meanwhile Mr White was raging about the fact that Olly didn’t warn him about this hilarious belly flop of fame. Some of the group started singing to Olly Don’t go chasing waterfalls as we got stuck the lyrics so we turned to ‘Mother Hen’ Emma Swaby to help us out as she knows everything. Emma saw this as chance to have a solo and started to sing the whole and killed it. More climbing and getting wet lead us the top of ‘The Big Daddy’ were Mary stupidly asked us if we wanted to ‘step into’ the plunge pool, of course we were all up for it. Olly went first and done it wrong because well he’s Olly and full on jumped in. We all went for a second go and our mission was to splash Mr White and his camera so the mug shots would come to an end after Beccy very kindly showed us how it was done, but it didn’t stop him. Then began, the walk back. We all had our hands tucked into our buoyancy to stop them from falling off. Olly started walking backwards, looking like a duck. The bum shuffling queens did not succeed, but decided to sing oasis, with Olly and obviously Emma joining in. Once we got to the minibus we had to get changed in the woods. Amy had just changed out of her soaked clothes into fresh underwear, and fell over into the mud, just in underwear. The day wouldn’t have been completed without everyone falling in the gorge or mud at least once.

By Beccy Rawson and Megan Short.