Hi guys! It’s Maddie and Caroline here!
It’s our second full day here and in our group today we did some gorge walking. It was an early start as normal, at about 7.30am today. We had a warming breakfast, then began getting ready for the day. We had a group meeting with our leader – Jez, and he told us the equipment we’d need for the day.
It was about a 30 minute drive to the gorge, called ‘Afon Ddu Gorge’ which in English translates to ‘The Black River’. When we arrived, we were lead outside and were geared up with harnesses and safety equipment which we attempted to put on ourselves. One of these pieces was called ‘the bum strap’ and we all needed help putting these on. –Not everyone was offering help though!
Once we finally entered the gorge, we were told a few safety instructions, and then set off. The first thing we noticed when we started were the numerous rocks and gushing waterfalls. We all agreed to help each other along, heaving ourselves and others up steep, slippery crevices. A little while into the walk, it started raining, and despite developing what we thought was hypothermia, we didn’t stop! We carried on, and after a short while the rain started to calm down and finally came to a halt.
The first main obstacle we came to was a curved wall that we had to climb across to get to the other side. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, Maddie (me:D) was first to topple into the very deep and muddy water… But with the saviour of Caroline, (who could walk on water; much like a god) I was saved from the man-eating rocks! We were all smiling though, because as soon as we all approached the other side, Gabriel decided he wanted a quick swim too!
We then clambered onto the next group of slimy rocks nearby a beautiful waterfall. Jez was leading us, and he quickly strolled across the middle of the waterfall, with the water gushing down on him whilst he gripped a few rocks to heave himself across. We then all repeated this step, except it was much less smooth, and not as easy, and much noisier with screams, and generally much worse when we did it!
We soon came to our first break, and we all had a delicious homemade cookie and a Kit-Kat. -Apart from the few that weren’t very hungry. After a few minutes of rest, we soon continued our trek through the gorge.
We then came to the infamous ‘Elephant’s Bum’. Which to be honest, most of us didn’t see any resemblance at all towards an elephants bum…not that we had seen one. Gabriel was first to climb up the ‘lip’, then crawl onto his knees and squeeze through the small crevice. He was then followed by me (Maddie), Miss Hodgitt, Libby, Georgia, Alex, Caroline, Maxine, Kirstie and Morgocia. We then were all instructed to walk towards the steps, on a steep slope, which we then sat down on for a few minutes before moving on.

By Maddie Kear and Caroline Stanco