Arrows, apples and beluga whales – Prep VI day 1

The weather gods favoured us as we arrived at Chester YHA to glorious blue skies and very little promise of rain – unlike some of the other groups who have been a little less lucky with the weather.  Straight off the bus, not even time to unpack our bags, it was off to the archery range for our first activity of the morning.  After a safety briefing, and a pause to watch the ‘beluga whale’ plane lumber across the sky, it was time to try our luck and see who could score most points on the board.  Lucy and Niall set the early pace; Ruby smashed them out of the park with a bull’s eye; most people were happy just to hit the board.  Once Miss McEvoy stepped to the mark, the cows in the field behind the range very quickly vacated the area.  Balloons were strapped to the targets; sadly, none were popped despite the very best efforts.  There are plenty of apple trees around the centre, but given performances it was felt best not to recreate a William Tell moment.

On to orienteering.  With fabulous grounds around the centre, there was plenty of space to search for our markers.  A great bit of map reading from our groups meant that no one actually solved the mystery puzzle the marker pegs were supposed to reveal, although Leonard and Adyan’s group came closest.  Emily’s group had an interesting tactic; rather than returning to the leader each time for their next coordinate, they simply decided on an extensive tour of the grounds to find as many clues as they could.  If you need a short cut anywhere on site, just ask them.

Lunch at that stage was very welcomed, and afterwards then it was off to see if we could construct waterproof shelters for our groups.  With various resources at their disposal, it was up to the groups to decide how best to build their ridge shelters.  Construction methods were interesting; cooperation intermittent; knot tying to various degrees of success.  However, when Dave and Mark came round with their buckets of water, apart from Olivia who stuck her head out of the shelter at the wrong moment, most children managed to stay dry.  Offers to spend the night in said shelters were, however, politely declined.

It was time then to see if we could emulate Keith Flint and become firestarters.  With flints, cotton wool and kindling, plus wood collected from the forest floor, every group managed to get their fire lit and maintain them for some time, although the huge logs that some groups optimistically collected were not called upon as fuel.  Neither were the fires necessary for cooking our evening meal fortunately, which was fine as our spaghetti bolognaise was delicious.

Suitably refuelled, our evening challenge was to send an ‘egg space rocket’ as high into the evening sky as we could while at the same time preserving the egg when the rocket re-entered the youth hostel orbit.  Quite what Oscar’s group did to their egg prior to take off remains a mystery, and sending merely the shell up while the contents remained spread over the table was stretching the rules slightly!  Two groups managed to return their eggs to earth safely – breakfast for them! – while The Londoners (Florence, Lucy and Ruby) sent theirs the highest.  A cracking effort – or not!

And so a busy, event filled day, a bit of downtime this evening and so to bed, ready for tomorrow’s efforts…