Rain, rain and more rain

Posted on | By Mr Alderson

RIMG1008Waking up, and looking out of the window in hope that the weather today was going to be sunny, and warm like the days we’ve experienced before; we saw the grey skies that gloomed miserably outside… This made us even more tired, and lazy than we already were! We lazed down to breakfast, cooked bacon, scrambled egg and smiley faces, this was very delicious, and filled us up with the energy we needed for the very tiring, exhausting day ahead.

We then went to a brief meeting with our group and organised the equipment we needed for the rest of the day. The girls and the boys both jumped into the minibus and set off for a half hour journey to Capel Curig. Once we had arrived at our destination our group leaders (Mr Keith and Mr Alderson) told us that this was a SELF navigated walk to a place called Llyn Geirionydd which was about 4 miles away from our starting position. After a few moans and groans we started our adventure into the rocky terrain.

Walking past the fields and meadows full of sheep and cows, we felt the first drops of rain falling down onto us. With this we sped up our walking pace, making sure that we all stick together, heading onto the winding foot path through the ever green forest. The boys as always were very quickly attracted to the flowing rivers and streams, this allowed the girls to have some rest before trekking onwards on our journey. As well as the water features the boys got very much entertained by the slippery mud, which had been made even more slippery by the now heavy rain! They put on their water proofs (trousers, top and hood), and then after run ups, they slid down the muddy hills- on backs, fronts and sides!

With the boys covered in mud, we continued our adventure to the lake. We passed woodlands, streams and even took the wrong turning, but after a while we eventually made it to the lake with our destination in sight. Whilst we walked along our route in the pouring rain, the boys decided to stop at a man-made rope swing which hung above the water. Obviously (with their water interest) they all wanted a go. Us girls and Ryan spent at least half an hour watching and laughing at the boys getting wet and dirty whilst we were standing shivering in the torrential rain. About to get pneumonia and probably hypothermia, the boys decided to come out as they were staring to freeze. They put their fleeces on which were the only things that weren’t wet and carried on walking.

We hoped, after seeing Mr Alderson and Mr Keith on the opposite side of the lake, standing warm and dry by the heated minibus, that we could take the short way round the lake to them. But NO of course we couldn’t, we had to go the long way round the lake, to the minibus! After the long hurried walk, we all rushed inside the minibus, and had the rest of our lunch. We travelled to our next exciting activity, ABSEILING! When we arrived, it was still raining… So the girls also then got into their water proofs, before we were then given a harness, helmet and all the other equipment we needed and we took our walk up the steep cliff. When we got to the top, the nerves started to show for some people, as they realised that we had to abseil down a 20 metre cliff face…

Blake showed his confidence as he was the first to conquer the wet and slippery cliff, then the rest of the boys followed. The girls went next and Mr Alderson came down after all of us. Ryan was getting a lot of persuasion from other people, but the nerves got through to him and unfortunately he didn’t attempt the challenge. The abseil down wasn’t as hard as many people thought it was but it was still quite tall. We then made our way back to the minibus through the forest, took off our waterproofs and gave in our equipment. The rain continued as we drove back to the centre after a day of hard work.

By Angel Foster and Tayla Bayley

Drenched!

Posted on | By Mr Alderson

An early rise to the morning, we finished breakfast and made our way to the meeting room. surprised not to actually see our instructor in there, we wondered what the day ahead was going to be like. Mr White and vending machine (tom) unfolded a huge map of the Snowdonia National Park onto the table. Mary then walked through the door and we started to find out more about how to map read and what the symbols meant.
We finished the talk, and got going as quick as we could. We had a small delay as Gabriel’s hiking boots were completely filled with water and Jacob forgot his water proofs once again. On the way we decided to have a sing-song with everyone to some “popular” music. We eventually got to our starting point, where we then found out we were being left alone having to navigate ourselves over 7km.
We began our trek up a steep road to find ourselves at the first junction. We were confident that we had to turn right so we walked for between 5 to 10 minutes before vending machine (Tom) mentioned us taking a wrong turn. We had never been so annoyed with ourselves, so we walked back to the last turning off point and figured out the correct way.
About half way through the first section it started pouring down with rain. We got drenched. It was ridiculously muddy and sticky almost everyone got stuck, we were plastered up to the knees with mud and had never been so soaked. After all the hassle with Mud we finally finished the first section of the navigating.
The second section went fairly quickly as everyone got to the point where they didnt care whether they were wet and muddy so we didn’t bother stopping as much as we usually would. We were almost finished when Gracie tripped and twisted her ankle , so Gabriel told everyone to pretend they had an injury so we could skip the final section. We failed to complete the task of faking an injury and had to carry on 🙁 At the final point of the second we sat down and had lunch, believe it or not we ate under a big yellow sheet which did actually keep us fairly warm. Vending machine (Tom) started to film a vlog when Jacob decided to blabber on about god knows what.
Last section, still drenched, still raining, however the mud slowly started to stop. This final block was less effort as it was a flat surface or down hill the whole way. We staggered onto the slippery rocks that had a boggy drop down into the quick flowing stream. We managed to cross the railway track after getting soaked a second time from more rain, when we came to a huge field with cows and sheep. A few people were in front of us going for a leisurely walk, when they found themselves letting out around 30 cows through the unlocked gate. Swiftly moving ourselves around the cows we finally made it through the trek of 3 difficult but exciting tracks.

By Summer Stocker and Gracie Chapman

Afon Ddu Gorge

Posted on | By Mr Alderson

The weather today was very cold and torrential rain, it didn’t really make a huge impact on our day as we were visiting the Afon Ddu gorge which was a wet activity anyway. We started to pack our safety equipment before we left and made our way to the activity. We slowly arrived at the Afon Ddu (black river) after a 45 minute journey in the mini van, so we started to attach our harnesses and buoyancy aids to ourselves ready for the day ahead. Our team had to walk up a slope to get to the river, however many people slipped on the way as it was very muddy and steep, luckily no one got too hurt. Then we got to the destination after a short trek with slow people slipping behind (Amy, Spencer).

Our day in the Gorge started off as us walking across a river on slippery stones, and scrambling up through freezing cold waterfalls along the fast-running gorge water. Halfway through our trip Magic Mike (Our Instructor) had to lower us down into a dip in the gorge so that we could continue our day. We all had to attach our harnesses onto a rope with our ‘cow tails’ so that we were able to be lowered down, a few people had trouble getting down and slammed against a rock on the way! To climb up the next bit we all had to haul ourselves up over the other side of a slippery rock, Jasmine couldn’t get up so Keely and Olly had to keep trying to push her over it. When we reached the end, after many slips and falls, we were faced with a massive waterfall which we were allowed to walk through. After jumping in at the pool at the top and walking through the waterfall, we began to make our way back the way we came. On the way back Amy slipped off some rocks and fell onto some more before slamming her chin into another rock, it started bleeding a lot and left a dent in her chin which swelled up a little bit, Keely couldn’t stop laughing! After Amy’s chin was cleared up Magic Mike let some of us slide down a waterfall instead of climbing rocks. By this time we were already wet so didn’t care if we walked through water or jumped in anymore. By the time we got back to the mini bus everyone was soaking wet from falling in and our wellies made squelching noises as we walked from all the water that had gotten into them.

Magic Mike sent the boys and girls separate ways to get changed into dry clothes within the forest before meeting us all back inside the van where we ate our lunch and drank our hot chocolates to warm ourselves up. Then we made our way back to the Kent Mountain Centre and had showers to warm us up after our eventful day.

By Keely Fright and Jasmine Sayer

The Three Options

Posted on | By Mr Alderson

The drizzly dawn of North Wales confronted us as we shuffled out of the dorms to breakfast. Luckily it was potato waffle day which was scoffed quickly in the anticipation of today’s activity. We met up with our team to be informed of the daily activity. It turned out to be orienteering and gorge walking (the more exciting of the two). The day consisted of 2 orienteering courses, one around the centre and the other around the local area and town. Our equipment, in small quantity, only consisted of a map and answer sheet. Within a maximum of 20 minutes the first course was complete so we headed to the next location. The journey in the van was always made fun by the cool ones at the back of the bus (Sherlock and Watson). The thumping music made our enthusiasm reach the next level, the nicknames also helped.

After a short journey to the local town we hopped out and tried to locate ourselves. It took everyone about 5 minutes to complete this; however the group including Sherlock, Watson and Harry Ramsden took all of 20 minutes. We trekked down the nearby road to find points, that were labelled on our map. Our instructor, Jez, believed we had worked too much with the same people. So we were split into groups by Jez instead. Most of the groups completed this pretty speedily but two groups struggled to find last few, causing us to stay put underneath a fairly large tree.

The bus journey on the way back we were entertained with the ideas of Will, who wanted to pimp the van. He wanted a cargo net on the ceiling to hold our bags as well as a larish green exterior. Harry Ramsden gave an input by saying that we should have large speakers on every other seat. These ‘improvements’ were not likely to happen but a boy can dream.
When we returned the deliberation of the three options started to occur. They were:

  1. Go To The Gorge And Be Miserable
  2. Go To The Gorge And Be Happy
  3. Sleep (Sherlock’s Idea)

All the team members voted for option 3 but we were out ruled by Jez, Hodge and Long Legs (Karl).
So we boarded the bus again and set off to the gorge. We later arrived and started walking towards the bottom of the water avalanche (a.k.a the gorge). We trudged up the rocks and shortly came to our first pool. This just so happened to be a sliding pool in which you slid of the rocks into the freezing water below. This just fuelled our adrenaline as we began our ascent.
About half an hour later we came to a cave which looked extremely daunting in the eyes of everyone. From a viewing platform above we watched half the group stumble through a cave and waterfall. The two halves then swapped over so the now soaked ones could also have a laugh as they watched people step through the so called washing machine. Not long after we arrived at the summit of the gorge which commenced our day of map reading and climbing a flowing river.

By Alisha Holmes and Jack Whitehead

The “literally actually seriously” enthusiastic adventure

Posted on | By Mr Alderson

P1110746After a delicious full English breakfast, we went to the raindrops meeting area to find out today’s activities. Our team leader, Jez, made the decision that the group would go sea level traversing  and after two mountain days back to back, the team was relieved with the news. We were advised to use blue IKEA bags because we would be getting extremely wet and would need a change of clothes, the soaking ones would be placed inside the bags to save the mini bus from the smell of wet clothes and seaweed. As we drove towards the destination we crossed a bridge to a small island named Anglesey. Finally we arrived to the desired beach that our task would take place, Cable Bay. The beach is called this because the first telecommunication line from Great Britain to the United States of America ran along the beach. The team started climbing the rocks that surrounded the beach, we also kept an eye out for any life in the rock pools and managed to spot a shrimp, sea anemone and other fish that names have slipped my mind.

After wading through some water and leaping and scrambling from rock to rock, we finally finished climbing to the top of a cliff in which we followed a public path back down to where the bus was for an early lunch. Frankie Ramsden accidentally selected salmon paste in his sandwich, this was one of three options. He took one whiff of his salmon paste roll and he knew he would not be eating it, it was quite amusing to the rest of the Raindrop group, Frankie the dare devil. After lunch was over it was harness on, cows’ tails on, helmets and buoyancy aids on. We trailed up a cliff path to where Jez had set up a sea level traversing route, just before we could see the task, Jez showed us a burial ground in which was built approximately 2500BC, the quickest history lesson ever. After Jez` lecture we made a descent down towards the start of the rope in which we could attach our cow tails onto the safety rope, this was here in order to aid if one of our feet were to slip and we fell.  The rocks were unforgiving and sharp as well as being fairly slippery, luckily no one fell and got hurt. After we had conquered the sea level traverse we headed to Tyrolean traversing. This went down well with most of our team except from Sydney who struggled massively during the last leg of the traverse but she eventually made it.  After Sidney’s epic campaign we all made it and you wouldn’t guess what happened next, we all jumped in including Miss Hodgett and Carl (one of our instructors) did a front flip. The water was unbearably cold but now we are here (including Sydney) in the warm and dry.

By Francis Ramsden & Ophelia Fletcher

Sea-level Snowflakes

Posted on | By Mr Alderson

Everyone has remembered the days with waking up unusually but being so tired at eight o’clock you are not able to remember much, so if I skip to meeting in the room with our instructors you should be able to understand the day. When we went into the meeting room to talk about what we would be doing in the day and to make the choice of what we would be doing, we all decided on going sea traversing on cable bay, two other groups were also on the bay and we saw them sometimes.

We went on the left side of the bay first and went traversing, rock-climbing and looking for different types of shells so we knew what ones we could stand on when we were traversing on the rocks. There were lots of rock pools with anenomies on them and loads of crossing from rock to rock over the water with the tide coming in so we had to cross it really quickly before the tide came in and got peoples feet wet. The first to fall in and slip was Miciah, he didn’t quite make the rock on the other side and decided to jump in.

On our way back to the minibus to have lunch we had to climb up a crack in the cliff face up to the top. Lunch was refreshing and was enjoyed by everyone but at the same time people had no clue of what was coming next and they were probably quite scared.

After we had our lunch we went on the other side of the bay and the conversation while we were walking was mainly about YouTube and how it worked because a couple of people in our group have channels they were explaining about it operates. Jacob came up with at least one nickname per person some had two or three, one of our instructors for example looks like Guy Martin and also he teased Jacob into thinking there was a vending machine on top of one of the mountains the previous day so vending machine was also a nickname.

We went Tyrolean traversing as well which was one of the most fun things that we did today (even though everything else today was amazing this was just the best) we went from one rock to another over water (again) but this time it was much further and we had harnesses attached to a rope, we had to pull ourselves over and if you wanted to attempt a backflip you could, only three people managed but some got close. After, the group moved over to a rock that was safe to jump off of, all but one jumped and the others were cold until they had got changed round either side of the minibus, girls on one and boys on the other side.

By Alice Crine and Oliver Smith

Slippery Cliffs

Posted on | By Mr Alderson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe day started with a nice sausage, eggy bread and spaghetti. This was shortly followed by a meeting in the unisex common room in which the groups were told to go to their instructors and find out what the activities for the day were.  Mike (our instructor) gave us the opportunity to either climb Snowdon or go Sea Cliff Traversing in Anglesey.  The choice was easy for everybody as we climbed the mountains ‘Cnicht’ on Monday and ‘Tryfan’ on Tuesday. We arrived in Cable Bay, put on our waterproofs, buoyancy aids and harnesses.

We then set off to climb the interior of the surface that lay there before us. We then spent the remainder of the next few hours traversing through trickling waterfalls, slippery rocks and sharp objects which stood in our way. We carried on scrambling until we came to a fairly large gap in the rock called a Tyrolean traverse which the only way to cross was by a rope which we attached our “cow tails” and set off for the cliffs.  Roughly 20 minutes of Traversing later, a pupil tripped roughly three metres down a rock on the side of a near vertical cliff.   The first time we pulled ourselves along the rope to the other side normally, however the second time around Mike let the group try and do a backflip whilst still attached to the ropes.  Mike then noticed another group of Dane Court students with their instructors Jez and Karl also traversing on another cliff face around the corner.  We then attempted their rope course which was tricky at first but as we gradually got used to it as time passed.

For the final activity we were allowed to plunge ourselves into the ice chilling temperatures of the Irish Sea which lay there before the rocks.  As some of the students ran in their dry clothing to the minibus others squelched in their drenched clothes.  Some students got changed into dry clothing and we then had lunch a little late and set off home for the Kent Mountain Centre.

By Spencer Longley, Elizabeth Gibbons

Peppa Pig Enthusiasts

Posted on | By Mr Alderson

IMG_0795In the morning we were greeted by a variety of foods and everyone was buzzing for today’s activities and wondering what would come of us by the end of the day. We split into two groups, four boys in one with Mr Alderson and the other four girls and a boy with Keith. We began the day singing on our little trip to the start of our journey of Navigation. (Keith’s was the best! (our group))
Now it was a race against time, well between the groups, 3 maps were given to each group and we were charge of navigation instead of the adults leading us. We started in Beddgelert and Mr Alderson’s begun in Pont Bethania. We started our journey heading towards Gelert’s Grave. Then using our mapping skills we navigated our way down the river bank, past gushing water which was very cold! But no one fell off! We also passed a steam train which was very noisy and made us jump.
The awesome group (us) begun the Cwm Bychan walk which was equally as relaxing as challenging, stopping for needed water breaks and to take in the scenery; it was a once in a lifetime experience.
After a good few hours of walking and climbing over a variety of different terrains, we beat the boys to the middle spot where we had lunch and met other climbers, surprising because some of us lagged behind but still persevered onwards.
After lunch we continued on our journey, using the maps and relying on our abilities to make a decision on which way to go, Keith’s group, walked quickly and efficiently heading down the mountain, we came across a large lake called Llyn Dinas and posed for a few pictures. One person decided to wade in a little further and almost ended up falling in face first (she also slipped a lot, more times than everyone else combined in our group!)
Finally we were so close! We felt like we could beat the other group and Keith and the rest of us, continued onwards, only to get stuck in the mud. We waded through the slushy brown stuff and even came across poo a few times. Nasty! Our boots sunk into the slush as if it were sinking sand. A few of us got our foot stuck and needed help getting out. Later on, we had the choice of going down a muddy path or a nice path, one girl made the decision to head down the muddy one with the saying “let’s be Peppa Pig enthusiast” followed by the group making many pig snorts and jumping up and down in muddy puddles. Followed by Keith who just looked at us as if we were crazy people who escaped from the nut house.
After a little longer, mud covered (Angel and Tayla had a mud fight!) Ryan spotted the van and started leading us to freedom, boarding our sacred ride, we discovered we had to change mini buses and that we were to head to the boys ending point, our starting point. Instead we were beaten by a mere 15 minutes and drove straight past them, Keith and Mr Alderson, switched mini buses followed by their respective groups and headed back to the Centre. Music, singing and mud, it was rather fun actually!
(Mr Alderson on arrival crashed his minibus into the wall of the lodge…creating a terrible bang! Luckily we weren’t in there!)

By Candice Dennis and Elizabeth Allen

Climbing Y Garn

Posted on | By Mr Alderson

IMG_5659Today we woke up at 7:00am with the sound of an alarm bleeping in our ears. Then began the mad rush for the showers. After we had all finished, we headed downstairs for breakfast. We had a choice of scrambled egg, bacon and potato waffles or croissants and jam. When everybody had finished with breakfast, we went to our meeting room to discuss what we would need for the day’s adventure. We had two choices of mountains to climb, Y Garn and Snowdon. As you can probably guess from the title we chose the former. We thought that Y Garn would be more adventurous and require a greater range of skills yet we knew that when we got home and people asked us which mountains we climbed they would have no idea what Y Garn was. After this we returned to our rooms to pack our bags. And once we did that we were ready to go. We exchanged our comfy shoes for the hard, uncomfortable boots that were supplied. Remember kids, safety first =)! Next we got on the minibus. The journey was around 15 minutes and we listened to some ‘great’ tunes.
When we arrived at Y Garn, everybody charged to the kiosk trying to be the first person just in case they ran out of chocolate brownies. Then we entered a room and saw a model replica of the mountain range. In case you didn’t know Y Garn means ‘heap of rock’. In the following minutes we left the room and headed to the trail and Jacob began his moaning and Mr. White called him a melt. At first the path was quite shallow but it soon began steepen. It took us about an hour and a half to reach the top but we soon came to realise that it wasn’t and we still had a long trek ahead of us. We then stopped for a lunch break by the Llyn Clyd (sheltered lake) and continued on our way. Eventually after another hour of walking, Jacob talking and general chatter, we reached a point very close to the summit. We then stopped to finish our lunch and marched on go the top. We had made it to the top and we were so pleased with ourselves until we realised that we had to come all the way back down again. As we began to descend, we headed towards Devil’s Kitchen. We wondered why it was named this because it was a waterfall with nothing very kitcheny or devilish about it however, it is a spectacular view. Once we had clambered past the kitchen we went to rest by the beach on Llyn Idwal. This then turned into a stone skimming competition (and obviously Gabriel won!). Then we just resorted to throwing the pebbles as far as we possibly could. After the beach we climbed down more rocks and then got back to familiar territory. We then raced back down to the kiosk at bottom of the mountain where we purchased some more food before finally going back to our minibus. That was our day, thanks for reading.

By Gabriel Ellis-Jarman & Miciah Murphy

Pen yr Helgi Du journey

Posted on | By Mr Alderson

DSCF0574Waking up, not knowing where we were going, we struggle to the dining room to have breakfast and meet up with the rest of our group, the Raindrops.
Once we were told where we were going, to Pen yr Helgi Du (Hill of the Black Hound), we packed our bags, hopped onto the minibus, put on some tunes and set off for the mountain.
After a roughly 35-minute journey, we started our 2 hour trip to the peak of Pen yr Helgi Du. Our first obstacle was a 1 ½ mile long road leading up to a track which zig-zagged up the mountain, and when we got a mile up we stopped to wait for a few people to catch up and have a little spot of lunch.
We set off again and stopped by a running stream to fill up our water bottles, then headed off road up the mountain.
After stopping once again half way up and forcing Frankie to leave his giant piece of slate that he was determined to take right to the top of the mountain and having another snack, we started moving up again. Those at the front of the group with Jez and Carl started to talk about old films and TV shows while scrambling up to the ridge while those at the back just tried to keep up with the rest of us. (Sorry guys..)
Another break later we started to scramble up to the peak, with the people who were at the back last time at the front and vice versa. With no energy for funny conversations we just kept pushing on up the rocks.
Once we had finally conquered Pen yr Helgi Du, we stopped to admire the views and our success.
As everyone else started to prepare for the descent, Carl and Erin got bored and stacked up a tower of rocks everyone had brought up to the top and then, when they made it fall over by trying to stack one big rock on top of all the little ones like idiots, we made our way back down.
Our descent consisted of us walking down a horse poo ridden field and avoiding lots of mud puddles, eventually we managed to make it back down to civilisation.
We got back onto the minibus, blasted some sick tunes and made our way back to the centre.

By Olivia Hands and Erin Marshall

Next Page » « Previous Page