P7trip: Monday

Morning! Wet and cold today! Oh joy!!! As we say to the kids...it's character building!

Well, that’s day 1 done and dusted! The children are all in bed…..early at 10.30 and seem quite tired after their first day!

The journey up was fine and the weather was nice all the way up. The bus had a short toilet stop in Aberlour and made it to Loch Insh just after midday. Once we were shown where all our accommodation was we got the children off the bus and into their rooms with their cases. We then went straight up to our ‘meeting area’ for lunch and our welcome talk by one of the senior instructors.

The afternoon started with two groups doing archery and one group out sailing. Miss McFarlane’s and Miss Ingram’s groups went to the archery range while Mrs Stephen’s group ventured out on the loch to go sailing.

The two archery groups were soon up and shooting after a safety and technique demonstration from the instructors. We seem to have a few budding Robin Hoods in our group! Archery is a very technical and skilled sport and the children were really challenging themselves each time they went up to shoot their three arrows. We played a variety of games and ended up with a competition to see who could burst the balloons on their target first! Archery is not the most active of sports but requires a high degree of concentration and technique to do well. The children all worked hard and they all regularly hit the target which is no mean feat for those who have never tried it before.

Mrs Stephen’s group went out on the loch in two of the larger boats as it was too windy to put them out on the water in individual boats. So they spent their session sailing up and down the loch learning all about the skills required to steer, set up the sails and how to use the wind to get them about! No one fell in and they had a great time.

We managed to get some time in the play park before tea in the boathouse. They had soup and bread rolls, a choice of macaroni cheese, shepherds pie or baked tatties and either fruit, yogurt or apple crumble and custard! So there was certainly something there to meet most tastes!

The evening was spent orienteering! In teams of two or three they had a map of the site and had to find the 10 hidden markers in the quickest time! After an hour of running, or walking in some cases, about in the drizzle the team to find all the markers in the quickest time was……. the female staff!!!!

After our evening activity we had juice and a biscuit before taking part in some group discussions about the day. They were all quite happy to go to their rooms and get ready for bed and unpacked! All is quiet now and hopefully will be till their wake up call at 7.30am!

We hope that the weather improves a little for tomorrow. Two groups are sailing in the morning while the third will be at the archery range. The afternoon sees two groups doing problem solving and one group off on a walk!

Check out the slide show below for some pictures from the day.

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