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Army Section
Adventure Training
Adventure training is one of the best trips that the CCF runs. This is due to the vast amount of activities that you do whilst there. We spent a week in North Wales staying in dorms of ten. Well, when I say 'we', I mean the girls spent a week staying in dorms, whilst the boys from Bedford School spent a week sleeping in tents of ten outside! To be honest, Wales isn't famous for its amazingly hot weather, so when all the girls were inside during the night sleeping on beds, the boys were, very bravely, sleeping in their sleeping bags in tents facing everything that the weather could throw at them. Frankly, writing about adventure training is impractical, because it provides too much fun to be described in a few words, but I will try my best to give you a taster. (You'll just have to come along to find out what it's really like!)
The activities that we did included mountain biking, orienteering, mountain walking, kayaking, rock climbing, initiative training, gorge walking, abseiling and a high ropes course. We also went shopping for a while and spent some time at the beach. In case you don't know, high ropes is basically walking along tree tops, balancing on tight ropes and doing leaps of faith whilst attached to a safety harness.
The initiative training was the opportunity to compete with the other people from our CCF. We were put into groups and the training was broken down into two sections, the preparation section and the construction section. The preparation section consisted of each group being given £10 and half an hour to go around the town of Betwys Y Coed and buy things that would help us survive in the wilderness and help to provide us with the four things that we would need to survive: water, food, shelter and heat. Our group bought noodles, bottled water, string, bubble wrap for insulation, a lighter, a bowl and a bottle to collect water. When we bought the bubble wrap from the post office the man there told us that behind the post office there was a pile of flattened cardboard boxes and that we could take as many as we wanted as long as we kept that area tidy. So, as well as all the things we bought, we also had loads of free cardboard boxes.
We were then taken into the forest and given a large area in which we were told that we could set up camp, and we were given a set time to finish by. We based our camp around a dip in the ground over which we put logs, sticks, the cardboard and bubble wrap. After that, we spent a long time trying to get our fire going, but eventually we had a great fire and we used some of the water to boil our noodles in the bowl. So after a lot of hard work, we had shelter, water, food and warmth. Each group was marked on each of its four basic needs and the winners were announced when we got back to Bedford School, and yes, my group did win!
A lot of the activities were things that many of us had never done before like gorge walking. This is when you walk up a river, using ropes and harnesses to climb up and down waterfalls. When we got to the top of the gorge walk, we had the option to jump into the natural plunge pool. Our entire group jumped in. The shock of the cold water makes your lungs go into shock and you can't breath for about five seconds, but after I'd started breathing again and got out of the water, I was really glad that I had done it.
In the mornings, breakfast was served at 7am and we could have cereal, fruit or full English breakfast, which tasted especially good when we were woken up at 6.30 by RSM and told that there was a fire in our room. On this occasion, all the girls ran outside in their pyjamas still half asleep, whilst the guys had been woken up and been given time to get dressed, so they stood there laughing at our ultra-cool fashion sense! Dinner was always good with lots of choice, and we had packed lunches at lunchtime that consisted of a roll, crisps, chocolate, a sausage roll, biscuits, fruit and a carton of juice. There was always a big commotion of people swapping crisp flavours and chocolate bars!
On the coach on the way home, we were all a bit tired but that didn't stop us from putting make up all over the faces of the guys who had fallen asleep! When we got back to Bedford School, it was time to pack everything away and say goodbye to all the people that we'd met on the trip. That is, say goodbye until after Easter when we'd all be going back to CCF. All in all, it was an amazing trip and one I'd love to go on again.
Cadet Amy Bond, Year 10