Wednesday 6 November 2013

Today was wet. Which was ironic considering we are called the Sunbeams. Anyway…back to the activity, which was: Orienteering! Yeah, we had no idea what it was either, apart from orienting a map. It turns out that map reading was the general gist of the day.

So breakfast was pretty normal, the food was good, and conversation generally revolved around my incredibly terrible puns (There were so many milk puns I was just milking it!)-but really, they were eggcellent, truly cracking. So after breakfast we met Jez in the common room, and we discussed the activity, which was, as previously explained, orienteering. The challenge was to move around the course and stamp each point on our books. Pretty quick, and soon we were eggcited for the next part.

We then moved onto orienting in the small area of Llanberis. Me (Molly), Esme, and James walked alongside the train track which was from the quarry, and were miming pulling the train horn and then the train driver, surprisingly pulled the horn!! Then we came back to the centre and had a little snack before heading back off to a mountain.

Actually, it was a hill, technically, but still, it was very very tall (475metres). After a few songs and an Eye of the Tiger montage, we reached the top of the hill. Once we had reached the top, Jez and Ms Hodgett left us with our maps, and our orienteering skills to make our way to the parking lot, the other side of the mountain (Tall hill). With determination, teamwork, and a lot of excitement we managed to walk a couple of metres before somebodies…. Fell in a bog, not naming any names *cough* Ellie, Sam, Esme *cough*. So we continued till halfway keeping our spirits up singing many songs, and laughing till it hurts. But then we got to a junction where we weren’t too sure where to go, luckily there was a mysterious animal who makes your woollen jumpers (sheep). We followed him. He took us to our next bit, he was a very reliable animal. Originally, some of us were quite sheepish about following it.

So, we found some old quarry machinery that had sunken into the bog (I found it first so it was mine). I had that sinking feeling when we found it. A mysterious figure appeared behind us, and it had us worried, however, it moved away after a while. We began bog testing, and continued in our journey, relishing in our newfound freedom and self-sufficiency (I was rocking the new shoes!). And then they imagined Esme as a sheep. They wouldn’t stop laughing, and minutes later, we arrived at our next junction, once again using our map skills and a friendly sheep to guide, but once again, a mysterious figure followed in our footsteps.

After we had a small dispute over the next path, with a wall blocking our direct path, and a gate. Unfortunately, the gate was over a river. We eventually decided that instead of retracing our steps, we would continue up the wall, and, as if by magic, we found the gate, and another sheep. After crossing across the gate we went into a forested area, (we were going to make like trees and leave.) but then: Me (Ronan) and Olly faced off our mysterious stalker. It was Ms Hodgett. How anticlimactic, but before we could relay our findings to the group, Jez jumped out at the group, making them jump. We then continued back to the minibus, and on the way back to the centre we had a wheely good time.

We had a Wales of a time, singing more songs and driving over valleys (You could say the hills were alive with the sound of music). When we reached home, we waddled to the drying room, to hang up our clothes, some of us bundled onto bean bags watching ‘The Chase’, had dinner, and started writing the blog.

Molly & Ronan