We have arrived safe and sound!

We kicked off the week with some fun team building exercises, for which we needed to use our communication and problem solving skills.

We had a lovely dinner of bangers and mash or mixed vegetable risotto followed by butterscotch pudding with mandarins.

After dinner, we went orienteering in the dark which was a bit scary at times, and very muddy but mostly lots of fun.  We have enjoyed being in different groups and coming up with different group names.

Tonight we are settling into our rooms; making our own beds and making sure everything is neat and tidy.

Tomorrow we are looking forward to crate climbing! 

Written with the help of Naomi and Amy

 

Day Two

Today we were woken up early 🙁 although some of us were already awake!

First thing we did was have breakfast and make up our pack lunches.

We got ready for the day and went outside, we were surprised that was so cold and windy but luckily we had been told to wrap up warm.

We did crate climbing, which is when you are attached to a rope and harness, and with a partner you had to climb up as many crates as you could.

Mrs Paterson and Miss Davidson had a go because it looked like so much fun. When they fell off Mrs Paterson  landed on her bum in a crate, it was very funny.

After lunch we put on our wellies and waterproofs, then headed to the river for some river dripping. We caught and identified water bugs and invertebrates.

It was really interesting! We found a huge Stonefly Larva, which was two years old.

During dinner we sang Happy Birthday to Amber and the chef (Fiona) very kindly made a special birthday cake.

We’ll check in again tomorrow after we’ve been up Kindrogan Hill.

Written with the help of Keeley and Cieran (who had brushed his teeth)

 

Day 3

Today we climbed a super massive  hill called Kindrogan hill. We learned new things, and were told a story about the people who used to own Kindrogan House, it was a bit creepy. We all enjoyed listening to it though.  We found interesting plants and evidence of places people might have lived. At the top we played a game called ‘camouflage’ and had our lunch.

On the way down we were told about the ‘drop spiders’ to stop them falling on us we had to be silent and creep through the woods. Then, we hit the BOG OF DOOM, which was an incredibly long and muddy mess. Some people lost their shoes in the mud and had to be helped out. Don’t worry we rescued all the shoes in the end (and the children).

In the afternoon we did a low ropes course, it was all about trusting your friends that they would not let you fall. There were nine different stages/challenges you had to go though to complete it. Everybody managed to do everything with a little help from their friends. We all set a target of how many times you could touch the floor.

At night we used torches to go out to set traps for small mammals such as mice and voles. We will check the traps in the morning to see if we have caught anything.

Written with help from Emily and Molly.

Day four

We started the day by going and opening our mammals traps. Five out of the seven groups caught something. It was very funny because Abi (one of the instructors) screamed when a vole ran up her arm, a mouse escaped too.  

Don’t worry we released them back into the wild.

We walked the Cataran trail towards Kirkmichael, the Catarans used to steal each other’s cattle so we had to be on the look out for raiders. When someone shouted raid we had to run back into our “clans” the last clan to get together lost 10 of their cattle. We saw loads of frogs and toads on the way, some of us even got to touch one.

We had lunch by a big pond, which rippled in the wind. We had a go at starting fires together, it was a lot trickier than it looked because it was damp and windy. Most of us managed a little fire that went out quickly.

When we got back to Kindrogan, we had cake! Then we split into two groups, one of them did the leap of faith and the other made environmental art. Then we swapped. While that happened it was snowing… so we were freezing.

We were all really proud of how well we did on the leap of faith.

After dinner we had a campfire, it wasn’t too long because it was cold but we had some popcorn cooked on the fire and sang songs.

Tomorrow morning we will be doing the Nightline, we will tell you all about it when we get home!

Looking forward to coming home tomorrow

Written by Harry Burr and Nathan.