Challenge Camp!

AH!
What an unexpectedly great time! To be completely honest I was quite apprehensive about camping for three nights… My experience of camping in actual tents is one night on a Duke of Edinburgh bronze award in Cayman, where I didn’t manage to put the pegs in properly and got hit throughout the night. This was much better.

We left at 2:30 on Monday afternoon, about a two hour drive across the border near to Gloucester. As we were in a 60-seater bus, and the other group went in mini-vans we saw them for a brief 10 minutes as we switched over. We tried to hear some advice of what was to come, catch up on our past weekend at AC. Even in three days, it feels like a reunion.

Once we got there we were given a mat and a sleeping bag to put in one of the three tents for the girls (guys had another three). Apparently the other group had to set the tents up, which luckily we didn’t. Out first ‘challenge’ was making dinner for our group.

Overall our group was great at cooking. Sugar, from Mongolia was head chef, Abenezer from Ethiopia a superb Sous Chef, Daniel from Gambia was very good at rationing the food… and well Nicole (from Cameroon) and I managed washing up and getting all of the cutlery ready. What a team. They were all really considerate about my veggie diet, so every meal they chopped and fried the vegetables and gave them to me with the side before adding the canned meat (which looked way yummier, btw). So night 1= rice, night 2=couscous, night 3= noodles: with peppers, celery, carrots, onion and corn. MMMMM.

Every night we tried to have a fire… not too much success. The wood was too damp, the ground to wet… it just wasn’t going to happen. Either way we had check-in at 9PM by the fire. After that all the girls just went to bed. The first night was the hardest to sleep. I was SO COLD. My toes felt stuck together. My scarf as a pillow just wasn’t very comfy. Thankfully it got better every night, possibly as I wore more and more layers each time… and cuddling more with Amy from England and Laura-Bethia from Holland.

ACTIVITIES:

The first day we did Orienteering in the morning with Nick Janvier. After about an hour of explaining the course and the different sites, practicing using the compass and bearing we went off in partners to find 16 points. As a joke Nick insisted on pairing me with Abenezer. Not only does he also go by Abe which made things confusing, but he happens to be an extraordinary runner, on the Ethiopian National team for two years prior to AC. So there I was puffing besides this guy who was basically in a light prance. We had a great time though. He would hold my hand every time we went down a steep muddy side, even offering to put me on my back if it got too tough. Bless him.

That afternoon we did ‘Survival’. Thank goodness because I was exhausted. A local from the area named Steve had us make a shelter from the wood around us, build a fire, chop wood, and lastly cook some delicious bread on a stick as we did for our house bonfire about a month ago.

The next day was wet. Very wet. It was our off-site day. About a 20 minute drive away we did climbing and caving. Two things that I have already done with AoC. Look who sounds experienced all of a sudden. What is happening? Anyways I climbed the rock and Abseiled down, at the time telling Simon that there is no way I would do things like this if I wasn’t at AC, which is one of the reasons I’m lucky to be pushed in this way- mostly mentally. The rest of the climbing session I helped belay, and laughed with Chikara, my very own Japanese ninja.

After eating lunch in the entrance to a cave I kitted up to go inside. This cave was very different to the one that we went in during AoC summer as it was dry. Which made me superbly happy. Meditating in ultimate darkness, wiggling and finding our way without any lights on, allowing our touch to become so much more essential… nothing to complain about there! We even made out flags for the flag parade that evening in the cave. Group E started as eggs and became Eagles. Crazy stuff.

BTW! There were bathrooms, about a five minute walk away. The showers were low pressure and it wasn’t luxurious even by AC standards- but it was manageable. Not to worry my friends.

The last day we were meant to do Mountain Biking and then Canoeing. However this didn’t quite happen… I was all kitted out for Mountain Biking, borrowing someone else’s leggings as they were already dirty, helmet on, gloves secure. However Audrey’s chain broke within five minutes, and I went back with her. By the time we were back we wouldn’t have been able to catch up. So instead Audrey from Austria, Sara from Wales (but lived in so many cool places like Kenya) and I decided to take a walk. We basically just kept asking random questions, from favourite book to who you admire most walking upwards for half an hour and then turning back. As you can imagine this meant we weren’t paying the most attention… We only got perfectly lost to arrive back on the campsite at the same time as the bikers. Phew. My heart wouldn’t have been able to handle much more than that.

Then that afternoon we were meant to go canoeing on the rapids. However this had been cancelled the previous day as well, as with all the rain, there were no rapids- just very fast water. Not safe. I wasn’t too disappointed though, I didn’t have an intense urge to put on a wetsuit for my last activity before heading home. Instead we went ‘Gallivanting with Gareth’ (which that morning was ‘Roaming with Robbie’). It was another walk, another chance to talk to people I hadn’t had a chance to much before camp. Daniel and I compared home for quite a while, and then Karabo from South Africa beat-boxed for me the majority of the way back.

And then back to AC. Exfoliation, Cream, Floss, and dry socks. Bliss basically. In Open House I wore my wounds with pride (which included three pretty massive bruises on various areas of my legs, midge bites and a tad bit of sunburn from that day). Let’s just say that I wasn’t looking to the nines, besides my smile.

Challenge completed.