Well, we all arrived safely at Calshot yesterday morning. After introductions and meeting the instructors, we started with the most important event of the day – lunch! After that we were straight into the first activity of the day which, depending on which group you were in, was either a long Mountain Bike ride, Track Cycling on the indoor Velodrome, Snowboarding or Climbing. Your intrepid reporter joined in with the climbers, and we then moved on to the Velodrome after that.
After dinner, the Calshot staff led evening activities – half the group did a Low Ropes assault course and the other half got to do ‘Pool Crossing’, which involves building a rope bridge across a pool and then (you guessed it) crossing it safely as part of a team without falling in. Some definitely had more success than others – much hilarity was had watching Conor Lunn repeatedly start, fall in, try again and fall in again quite a few times in a row. That said, i’m glad I wasn’t being asked to take a dip in an unheated outdoor pool on the coast in the evening chill! After that it was off to wash up and go to bed.
This morning (Tuesday) after breakfast we were straight back to it again – I followed groups climbing and snowboarding and was very impressed with some of the young climbers with us this year – the group I joined in with all seemed to have absolutely no problem getting straight to the tops of the highest walls.
This afternoon we were all in the water, doing either Windsurfing or Sailing. Everyone had great fun getting very wet in the Solent – the windsurfers I joined in with gave it their all despite the chilly water and everyone had a great time!
Since then we’ve had our dinner, taken a long walk along the beach, had a few games of indoor football / tennis and are right now (mostly) watching the World Cup match together.
I’m pretty sure everyone here is going to sleep well tonight – I certainly will! We’ll be back to it again first thing in the morning.
Check out the photos from yesterday and today here.