“You get a lot of breakfast; it’s good,” said Connor (P7.25) as we started Day 2 at Castle Toward 2012.
The fun began at 7.30am when dorms were woken up, told to get ready and head down to the Green Room before breakfast. Breakfast consisted of lots of cereal, plenty of toast and even some tea! We were told to keep our plates and knives to make our own rolls and sandwiches for lunch. We had a choice of a variety of fillings: chicken, cheese, tuna, salad and coleslaw, and a bag of crisps, water and fruit. We took our lunch to our meeting rooms and got ready for our morning activities, which varied depending on our teams.
Teams 3 and 9 started off with archery in the walled archery range. Ellie (P7.27) said, “we spent a lot of time going over all the rules. It’s quite hard; you need to keep the arrow pointing down.” Imaan (P7.26) said, “you can tell if you’ve hit a good shot if you see the flight [the brightly coloured top part of the arrow] wobbling in the target board.”
Team 11 spent the morning “facing [our] fears” (Mustafa, P7.28) at the High Ropes (commonly known as ‘the Catwalk’). After the all-important safety chat, we got harnessed up and, one at a time, we climbed up the side of the tree to the first platform. Those of us who wanted to challenge ourselves further tackled the next part of the climb to the highest beam. The shouts of encouragement from our team members below definitely helped to spur us on, with many of us saying that it helped us “to go that wee bit further and try to do [our] best” (Casey, P7.25). Casey, who was interviewed straight after her Catwalk said, “I thought it was really high but I knew I had to do it. The view from the top was great as it was such a nice day, and I felt really good after it.” Faizan (P7.25) went on to say that “it was quite scary and as I was climbing up I felt like falling down, but I decided not to as I was determined to have a go.” Calum (P7.26) admitted that “the hardest bit was climbing up as the blocks [the hand and foot holds attached to the side of the tree] were quite slippy and it was quite tricky selecting the correct block.” Nicole (P7.28) went on to say “I wasn’t really scared at the time but my legs kept wobbling and this made it harder to balance and climb.”
By this time we were all ready for lunch so we enjoyed eating our sandwiches with our teams in our meeting rooms and chatting about the afternoon’s activities.
Teams 3 and 9 were very excited about the gorge walk, which promised to be even more exciting due to the morning’s rainfall. After zipping ourselves up in our wetsuits, we started our watery adventure by plunging our wellies into the gorge. They immediately filled up with cold water, making us gasp! (The beauty of this is that our feet start to act like mini radiators, heating up the water trapped in our wellies. After about five minutes it feels like you’re walking in warm water, which is very pleasant indeed!) Mr Tyler followed us along the gorge taking photos and film footage for his class’s DVD. There were some fantastic examples of teamwork (Connor and Amy, P7.25; Carrie, P7.26) and positive mental attitudes (Scott, P7.27; Jamie, P7.28) along the way. The gorge walk was an amazing experience, and we played lots of games such as making a human dam. Of course, we got VERY wet, so we were all extremely glad to get a hot shower at the end of it!
After showering, we assembled in the Green Room for a quick discussion about the highlights of our day, and then it was dinner time. We had steak pie, pastry, potatoes and carrots with sticky toffee pudding to follow. Then we prepared for our night activities which consisted of Indoor Initiatives (a mixture of problem solving activities which we had to tackle as a team) or a Scavenger Hunt. As we neared the end of our second day we sat down to a supper of juice and flapjacks, exhausted but happy. Most of us settled down to sleep almost straight away, dreaming of doing it all again tomorrow!
Some other quotes from Day 2:
Fiona (P7.26) liked the challenge of all her activities. Lloyd (P7.27) liked the view from the hillwalk. Jamie (P7.26) said that the catwalk was “scary at first but that [he] was glad that he did it”. Brad (P7.28) said that the hillwalk was amazing. Mustafa (P7.28) prepared himself for the hillwalk by saying he was “up for it”. Kayla (P7.25) enjoyed trying to float in the gorge. Lucy (P7.25) found it funny to see (and do) all the Superman and chicken impressions on the Catwalk.
