Author: Mr Alderson

Mike’s group in the gorge (quite literally)

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This morning everyone seemed very tired and sleepy, we were exhausted from yesterday’s activities. We were woken at 7:30 and duty group even earlier at 7:15! Wednesday had slept in the corridor, her roommates had been snoring and coughing and just being annoying so she went with her blanket and sat on the chair outside her room until Ms. Hodgett brought her a mattress a few hours later (LOL).
Breakfast was really good and yummy! We had a cooked breakfast (bacon, beans and mini waffles), then we went into the common room and watched CBeebies. We watched the Tweenies which made a change to watching Judge Judy for most of the week. Then we split up into our different groups to find out what we were doing today. We were very happy that Mike had decided we were going to go sea level traversing instead of climbing another mountain that would have been too evil.
When we had all finished packing and getting all our gear on, we scrambled into the van, it was really quiet because everyone was half asleep. We got there and had a 10 minute walk down to the cliffs. We had some food while mike was setting up this rope course round some rocks. It didn’t look that difficult but once we got started it became tougher than we thought. Katie Hatt was so scared; she was reduced to tears before she had even started.
At the end of the course Wednesday barber’s foot managed to wiggle free of her shoe and it fell down on the rocks below. Mike had to climb down and retrieve it, even though Wednesday seemed to be doing better without it!
Though the course was rather hard most of our group managed to complete again, it was quite fun! However Gabby was stuck at the end of the course and caused a hug traffic jam because she couldn’t get down on to the ledge below.
Mike then unhooked all the ropes and we moved round to some other rocks further along the cliffs. Wednesday seemed to have a heart attack every time someone slipped. We had to do some quite big leaps across the sea which was a bit scary. Luckily no one fell in the water but lots of people kept slipping over and had quite a few scratches.

At the end of climbing the rocks, Mike told us that if any of us wanted to jump in we could. There were about four people who were really brave and jumped in straight away like Abbey Watkins, me (Niamh Elstone), Wednesday Barber, Jack Laffargue and Alfie Hatt. Once we got in we realised how absolutely crazy it was because the water was so freezing!
I (Christina Swaby), Gabby and Katie Hatt took a lot longer as none of us wanted to get our trainers wet or get cold but eventually I took up the courage to jump in and everyone else followed behind me.
As some of us got a bit warmer and more confident we started jumping on some high ledges! When everyone had jumped in and realised the stupidity in swimming in the Welsh sea we headed to the shortcut through the field and headed to the van to get changed.
The girls had to change behind the smallest bush ever in the middle of a field whilst the boys were on the other side further down almost in view of us :s. Everyone was finding it hard to change with a towel wrapped around us as the wind was very strong and came at the most awkward of times! We were all shivering so much and were more than happy when we got back to the van and finished off the rest of our hot chocolate. The journey home was simply a time to sleep and to eat food. When we got back we rinsed all of our clothes that had been in sea water. Once we had dealt with our clothes and hung them in the drying room, we ran to our rooms to get our towels and shampoo and went straight to the showers! That was the best part of the day. After we had gotten dressed and were happy and warm we had dinner and ate the best banoffee pie ever!

By Mike Niamh Elstone and Christina Swaby

Sea level traversing with Jez’s group

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At 7:30 we were woke up by Miss Hodgett, it was not great because we were all very tired! We had 15 minuets to get ready, and be downstairs to breakfast at 7:45 so we quickly got dressed and ran downstairs, after a nice breakfast of bacon, potato waffles and beans. The waffles were tiny and ridiculous. Then we had our meeting with Jez to find out what adventure we were going on today, today’s activity was sea level traversing. We were looking forward to all the exciting things Jez was telling us. Sea level traversing is scrambling along the seal level on the rocks Alex fell in first and got soaking wet and then we headed back to the minibus where we had an early lunch, after this we put on our helmets, harnesses, buoyancies and clipped on our cow tails to our harnesses, getting ready for our second part of our activity. This is a rope attached to 2 ropes either side of 2 rocks (which were about 10-15 metres apart) we got clipped on the rope by are harnesses and karabiner and squatted down and pulled ourselves across the rope using our hands and arm strength. If you were brave enough when you got to the middle you could do this thing called ‘twiddle’ its were you do a back flip on the rope and bring yourself up so the rope is on your stomach and your balancing on the rope on your front with your ankle hooked over the rope, you then pulled yourself along the last part of the rope and unhooked your self from the rope once reaching the other side, all of this is called a Tyrolean Traverse.

After waiting for all the others to complete the traverse we did a bit of scrambling on the rocks and then we arrived to a place where we sat on the edge of the rocks facing the sea. Jez told us that this is the place where we could jump in, everyone was scared at first but soon enough everyone was wet! Libbie jumped in first, followed by Gabriel, then Maxine and Caroline, then Alex and Libbie, then Malgozarta, and then Georgia was finally persuaded to jump in and get soaked. Then Jez showed us his skills and did a front flip into the sea, Libbie followed with another front flip and then Gabriel ATTEMPTED a front flip, as did Maxine tried to, but instead failed and was more like a roly poly into the water, then Caroline tried but accidentally slipped in with a loud scream, after everyone was soaking wet Miss Hodgett was persuaded by our group, because she wanted the show Mr White who’s the boss around here and on a count of three she bombed into the water #trololololol~
We headed back to the minibus and once we got back to the minibus we took of our harness, helmets, cow tails and buoyanciades. We were instructed to go and changed along a small narrow path behind the tiniest sand dunes I’ve ever seen. It was absolutely freezing and didn’t help that we were soaked! Alex’s toes went blue and we were all shivering like a hex bug! We all finally got changed into our spare warm clothes and headed back to the minibus for a nice hot cup of hot chocolate, tea or coffee and maybe a bite to eat. We headed back to the Centre all falling asleep in the minibus on the way. When we got back we had to collect all of the equipment and dunk it into a big bucket of water several times and hung up to clean them as they have been in the sea and needed cleaning. Everyone was tired and hungry so after doing this we headed upstairs and had showers.

At 5:45 the bell went for dinner, finally! We had a Turkey roast, with roast potatoes, pigs in blankets, stuffing, vegetables and gravy. Almost everyone had cleared there plates and most people wanted seconds! After this the table was cleared and the dessert was brought out. The choices were either fresh fruit salad or Banoffi pie, which also went down as a success. Apart from being colder than ice and wetter than a whale in the sea we really enjoyed our day it was been one of the best days so far. We’re looking forward to what adventures await for our last day tomorrow!

– By Alex Somers and Georgia Pennie xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Lou’s group – Thursday

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Mike’s group at large in Snowdonia

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(Read in a suspenseful manner)
Our day started off with breakfast, we had bacon, baked beans and waffles (that were a quarter of the size of normal waffles, which was disappointing). After breakfast we collected our lunch boxes, which contained sandwiches, Jaffa Cakes, a piece of shortbread and dried grapes. We then went to get properly ready for a calm and relaxing day of walking, or so we thought. Interrupting our relaxing day was a huge bell that told us to come and collect our flasks. If you had not chosen the easier choice of hot chocolate you were forced to do child labour and make your own. We then had a meeting about what we’d be subjected to today. It was brutal, the sheer horror of what we were going to do was evident on our faces.
We would be walking, they would then leave us half way round the trail, with nothing but a map and our own knowledge. It would be a difficult trek back to base. We knew that we would face terrible dangers on the way. We ran into a tribe of wild sheep not accustomed to the usual sheep ways of gentle grazing, these sheep hissed and baaed and scratched with their hooves. Mitchell, our new found leader fought off the sheep with his backward summersaults that he had learnt earlier in the day from the Tyrolean Traversing. Whilst earlier trekking over pine needles and rocks, Lou and Mr White had given us some important additional knowledge on squirrels and mushrooms.
Squirrels- Red squirrel are usually located toward the north of England and the North of Wales. The South of England and Wales, has already been dominated by the grey squirrels a.k.a “The Grey Pack”
Mushrooms- The reasons why mushrooms are popular party attendees are because they are……………”FUN GUYS”. Also red Mario mushrooms are only found under birch trees and inside mysterious yellow question mark boxes in Mario games.
We used this knowledge wisely although one of our own still ate one of these deadly mushrooms, red squirrels would have devoured her body if we had not fed her a 1up, the Mario controller was being generous this time. Or so we thought.
We could see the base, we were desperately trying to fight through undergrowth we had nearly made it, when we found…..the swing. We believed it to be a good idea at the time, little did we know it was a trap. Set by the notorious James-enerio and his faithful sidekick Sally-enco who had been secretly travelling with our group disguised as James Caps and Sally Warren. The innocent Princess Grace had fallen into this trap due to her trusting nature. She had been trying to save an injured bird when James-enerio and Sally-enco sprung into action. The others in the group did not know what to do. Their loyalty to the Princess was lacking and in the frenzy they chose food over the Princess. If it was any other Princess they may have not been as forgiven to their subjects but as it was Princess Grace she forgave all taking into consideration her own never ending hunger. After giving James-enerio and Sally-enco a secret potion made out of the finest Robinsons orange juice in the whole of the land, they transformed into James Caps and Sally Warren. They had returned to their normal selves.
We may never really know what truly happened on this horrific journey, some of the of group may believe it to just be a dream or a figment of their imagination but Grace Mitchell and James Caps will also know what really happened.

By James Caps and Grace Mitchell

Some of this content may be real but other scenarios have been set up for your entertainment.

Wet and wild walking

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To begin the day we had our breakfast which consisted of sausage, eggy bread and spaghetti it was good says Louis, the other options were to have a croissant with jam or just plain old toast. After we got our wellingtons, which barely fitted our feet because we were worried that they would fall off, we grabbed the equipment and boarded the mini bus. After the delight of Tim’s singing we arrive at Nant Bwlach-yr-haearn abseil point. Once we had reached the point of the abseil tim bravely chose to go first and his squeal of excitement as he touched the floor was rather intresting. Shortly afterwards Louis with his little legs went over the edge and struggled to stop himself from spinning around. Shortly after followed Lauren and Ben was about to go however the fright and height of the cliff, which was approximately twenty-two meters high was a little too much for ill Ben everyone else completed the task with ease. Once everyone was at the bottom we walked back to the minibus we set off to the location of the gorge.
The river of the gorge was called Afon Ddu meaning the black river. Shortly after we had arrived at the river the first person took a tumble and a rather chilly dip into to the cold water this was Alex who was supposed to be good at this stuff had failed which left little hope for the others in the group. Then we found our self in a sticky situation where we had to climb around a rock, Louis was the first to attempt it however he did not succeed and fell in, Ben followed in Louis footsteps ad also tumbled into the water. The only two to make it across were Tim and Joe who got wet shortly afterwards anyway. We crawled through the elephants bum, which if you are wondering is an arrangement of rocks which looked like an elephants bum, everyone got through that safely.
Subsequent to the elephants bum we found a slide made of rocks Mr Alderson lead the way by showing us the way down the extremely short slide. The people that were not wet before this felt it was a little pointless as they found their wellies filled with water. We used our safety equipment to scramble up some slippery rocks which was fairly high. Consequent to this we had to cross three branches, Lauren did some weird thing on the branches where she nearly fell off and she ended up upside down. An optional thing to do was crawl through a gap in the rocks everyone apart from Ben did not decide to do this task as he still felt a little ill. Amod who was now soaking wet decided it would be fun to jump into some deep freezing cold water. Whilst people were jumping into the water others were sliding down a longer slide which really hurt Louis back side. Tim found a hole in the rock which was far deeper than anticipated and it came up to his hips he decided that it would be a good idea to put both legs in and he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to get out. After a steep ascent up a steep waterfall we jumped off a ledge into deep water again bens stomach wasn’t up to it.
After we had finished the exciting day, which to Louis was “Not a good day in the office” because he was freezing cold and wet. On our descent to the mini bus we went down one of the steepest hills in the world which was hard to walk down s may people used their own technique to go down was walking backwards, sliding down the hill and trying not fall on the way we passed a car which was in a little bit of a dodgy situation.
We got changed in the woods and Sam lost his underpants and harry nearly left with one welly. Overall everyone enjoyed the day even if we were a little tight of time.
After writing this Ben has just thrown up, poor Ben.

By Louis Clarke and Lauren Palmer-Jones

Wet and tired but overall fun

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Today we climbed Mount Tyfan. It was probably the worst day so far. After about 15 minutes in the mini bus we arrived in the middle of nowhere. It was freezing cold so no one was looking forward to it. We started walking and people were already moaning but we weren’t allowed to stop, so even though we didn’t want to, we managed to get going and carry on.  We got a quarter of the way there and people were falling behind and didn’t want to carry on so they stopped and caught up with the others after. There was a lot of scrambling which was very hard when it was cold and windy. We then got together as a group and carried on going because we had to get to the top, as we carried on the wind got stronger and it was even harder to walk. To give us something else to think about half of the group started singing and making their own songs which were hilarious.  For most of it, if we put one step wrong we could have fallen off. We got to a point where we could stop and eat some food. This place was shielded from the wind which everyone was very glad about as it was about 50 mph.

the last climb up to the top was defiantly the hardest. After the entire struggle to get to the top against all the wind we finally got there and was able to say that we reached our goal. After a group photo we realised that we had to get back down somehow. Jez decided that we would go the easy way down which mainly faced the wind. On the steepest bit of the descend, Georgia killed her walking boots by drowning them in every muddy puddle she could find, even after getting stuck in one. Maxine fell over twice banging her head and Caroline slid down a grassy hill. After all the injuries and people being tired and cold everyone was saying they want to be Alex as she was back at the accommodation sleeping because she had been sick the night beforeL  We finally found a man-made path with was useless as it worse than some of the actual path. We all slipped again and again when we got to the streams which would make all the rocks very slippery. After a while the foot path faded and we had to make our own path up hoping we was going the right way, we then found the normal path and carried on walking to another stream. Finally we reached the bottom of the mountain; sadly the mini-bus was round the other side so Jez had a plan. He ran round to the other side of the mountain as we had to try and stick to the path that led to a car park. At first it was ok; we all get along so we kept together on the path helping each other if we got stuck. The path faded again and we ended up in a bog and it took us a while to figure out how to get across without getting too muddy. We found the path again and there was a beautiful waterfall just before the car park. We made it at the same time as Jez in the mini-bus. Everyone was exhausted and relived when we got to the mini-bus and the toilets. #NearDeath #GoodTimes #NeverAgain

Saying of the day: “If you fall then you will die, so don’t fall” – Gabriel Hampton-Saint

By Kirsty Higbee and Libbie Templeman

Lou’s group – Wednesday

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Snowdon…

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Woke up to a cold morning at ten past seven and got dressed. Then we went down to a breakfast of sausages, spaghetti and eggy bread. We were then informed that the task for the day was to climb Snowdon. We then got our equipment ready and set off. After 15 minutes in the min bus we arrived at the bottom of the mountain (350ft above sea level) and started to walk up Snowdon. We were left to navigate with only a map. After we had walked for about 10 minutes, mike started telling us about the legends of Snowdon and the lakes around us .As we reached the first lake mike pointed out a pipe that was in the James Bond film “the world is not enough.” A couple of minutes later he started to talk to us about the plants in the area such as a weird type of moss which soaked up the water from the streams and when dry, served as an natural antiseptic for the people in the dark ages and the mines from the 1800s . Then about a mile later we sat down and mike talked about the copper crusher. This was a ruined factory that would have removed waste from the copper by crushing it. They did this to make the copper easier to move. We then continued to the second lake where we sat down and had our lunch. Then we continued on up a steep slope were people started to moan and groan. The weather started to turn bad and both the rain and the wind started to pick up. We then had a quick rest and climbed to the blue lake. We were told the lake was called this because the miners mined copper in that area so the copper reacted with the lake to make copper sulphate which is a blue colour therefore affecting the colour of the lake. We then did another ascent. On the way up we saw a wooden pole with hundreds of copper and silver coins placed in the pole. This was supposed to fend off dragons because the coins would shine in the dragon’s eyes. We then made the finale ascent to the peak of the mountain where every body started to fall over because of the snow and ice on the path. About 30minutes later we bumped into Mr Whites group who were hiding from the wind under a wall by the train that went to the summit. As we approached the peak the wind grew very strong and started to push us about the place. Katie got worried by this as she was afraid of blowing down the mountain. We reached the top and took a group photo before making a hasty retreat and had a quick break before starting our descent from the summit…
We went down the mountain following the rail track. As we made our way down the mountain we passed sheep. The sheep were friendly especially towards Wednesday, who ended up talking to them. By this time we were all aching and feeling ill. We made it to the bottom of the mountain and waited for Lou to arrive with the mini bus. We got bored and cold so we got out the emergency tent and huddled in it. Lou arrived an hour later. We arrived home safely yet tired and had dinner.

By Fraser Bore and Jack Laffargue

Mike’s group – Wednesday

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THE MOOCHERS (Jez’s group) in the gorge

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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

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