In the week before half term, 35 year 6 children went to Viney hill. The residential camp lasted 4 days and had 7 activities: crate stacking, abseiling, rock climbing, canoeing, team building, mountain biking, low ropes and archery.
Children had 3 places they could sleep in: the chalet, tents or in the house.
House was most common. In the house, there were 3 floors. The top floor was the boys’ rooms. The floor below was for the girls. In my room, we had triple bunks, and next door had some triples and some doubles. We had really nice showers (7) and lovely rooms.
I interviewed Aaila about staying in a tent:
“What woul;d you say about the tents?”
“To be honest I expected them to be smaller, although I suppose it was still quite squashed and we couldn’t unpack our bags properly.”
“Was the first night alright?”
“Well it was alright but ended up being a bit scary because there was a bat and an owl outside.”
“Would you rather have been in the house?”
“To be honest, I don’t know. The tent was fun but when it started leaking it was like, how are we going to survive another night with our tent already leaking. So I think the way it ended up was good, but I think I would’ve preferred the tent if it didn’t leak.”
The chalet was uneventful.
Here is Aila’s summary of all the different activities we did:
Crate stacking
Crate stacking is an activity where you have two builders, two climbers and two people who will hold the rope that was attached to a harness. The people who were building would have to stack the crates upwards, while the climbers had to jump up onto the crates and balance on them. The record of the tallest crate stack was 18 crats high.
Cycling
This was VERY muddy. We stopped at a ditch in the earth and it had a log that had been preserved under coal. It was one of the most exhausting activities that we experienced. Some people got a bit lost, once person had their chan snap and several people fell off.
Abseiling
Was where you walked backwards down a cliff. This activity was very hard because it was cold, wet and slippery. We all ended up doing it even though lots of people were scared. Some people even sang to encourage others who were frightened of going down the cliff.
Canoeing
Our instructor told us which way to paddle and which direction to go. We played Find the Ducks and Battleships. He even told us about a lorry and mattresses falling into the lake and red turtles (that story is pretend but the lorry one might not have been). At the end of that lesson some people jumped into the lake and swam.
Low ropes
Low ropes is an obstacle course where you learn to work as a team.We had to do an X Factor audition to get past one of the obstacles.It was fun because there were tunnels,walls and (pretend) lasers that you had to get past.It was scary for the people who were claustrophobic.
Archery
Archery was fun. We did games and found out what hand we use our bows on. Blue is left hand, right is red.The arrows were real and very sharp so we can’t mess around. There was a green net so the arrows didn’t damage the wildlife behind it. Someone in Mr Weinberger’s group nearly shot a pigeon which flew in front of them when they were firing.
Climbing
We were attached onto harnesses and we would have to climb up a wall. We learned different ways to climb and to not give up. It was a little scary for the people who were scared of heights and falling. We were allowed to give ourselves challenges and to complete them.
In the night from 7-8ish we did activities; some games outside, a quiz night and a thing where we had to build Viney Hill out of Jelly Babies and spaghetti.
Quiz night was quite fun and me, Amelie, Eleanor, Daisy and Jennifer (I think?), won. Our team was called The Teddies. We got a packet of Haribos for our prize.
The last night was spaghetti and jelly baby night. Archie’s team won some Haribos. We all got an additional packet of sweets and the people who didn’t win, still got sweets.
Overall, Viney Hill was: cold and wet but lots of fun. There was lots of laughter.
By Robin and Aaila from Turquoise class