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
Our last day of activities involved all the groups included ours journeying into the gorge. We arrived relatively early and set about harnessing up and checking that we had sufficient equipment, after a short walk into the woods we came to the rush of water. The activity began with our group gently making its way up the ever-increasing pools. We helped each other find hidden footholds under the white froth and worked slowly step by step up into harder and more difficult routes and terrain. Along the way we saw other groups struggling or laughing as they traversed similar scrambles. One group in particular were doing a route were you slide yourself under a narrow crack in the slippery rock and fly down a steep face while being pelted with spray. After a while of generally simple walking we came to place were the water was far too deep to avoid being soaked down to your clothes. We braved the freezing pool and emerged with a sense of achievement and wet long johns, Higher we climbed up into ever-increasing waterfalls before reaching the furthest we could possibly go. There before us lay a waterfall spectacularly huge I gaped looked round too see my friends amazement only to see him do something out of an ancient comedy, slipping onto a well-placed branch a leg on each side and the piece of tree in the middle right into his exposed crotch area. He hardly made a sound as we laughed. We made our way down having a go at the slide in the process which finished off our thoughts of a dry day with no shower. We returned to the bus and began the epic journey of getting on dry clothes before listening to terrible music all the way back to the centre. In all a nine out of eleven day.
