We had a really tired start to the day, and took our time to get ourselves up. We headed down to breakfast and had some cereal followed by sausages, waffles, spaghetti hoops and omelette.
It was then we were split into two groups. One group was going to go orienteering on Mumbles Hill in the morning, then go to Clyne woods for the afternoon. The other group were going to do the same two activities, but in the opposite order.
Miss Howells and Charles (Our instructor) went with both groups to Mumbles Hill. The groups had to walk up to the top of the hill, where they were shown how to use a map and were then set the challenge of finding markers doted all over the hill with a secret letter. These letters would then spell out a message. None of the groups managed to find all of the letters, but even the instructors said they had not found all of them. We had a good time up on the hill, searching around, apart from when 1 group got a little scared thinking that they were lost.
Mr Jones went with Pete to Clyne Woods with both groups. Here we headed off along the cycle track, before taking a turn off and trying to climb up a steep muddy bank. Some of us found this a lot easier and others, but worse was to come. Once we had finally managed to make it to the top, we headed along a path to a clearing. Once there, Pete gave us the challenge, ‘A storm was coming and we would need to make a shelter for our entire group (5 or 6 children) to fit in and shelter from the storm’. We had less than an hour to think about our design, gather the materials we would need and make the shelter. We then had to get in to make sure that we could all fit in. It was a really hard challenge, making a shelter using only the wood and leaves we could find all around us.
Once we had made our shelters we started the harder job of getting back down the steep muddy bank and back to the bus. Quite a few of us slipped on the mud, and there were a large number of muddy trousers hanging up in the dry room when we returned.
We got back to Dan y Coed to be greeted by Mrs Kieft. Unfortunately we couldn’t talk straight away as we had to make sure we had a wash as we were all wet, muddy and sweaty. Once out of the shower, Mr Osborne appeared to say ‘Hello’ and see how we were all getting on. It was really nice to see some familiar faces, other than Mr Jones and Miss Howells.
For our meal, we had fish fingers and chips with salad, peas and sweetcorn. These were really tasty. For pudding we had chocolate cupcakes.
Due to the weather not being so nice, we put our walk to Joe’s Ice cream on hold till tomorrow and decided to have a night in. We played lots of different games and Miss Howells and Mrs Barnes even went out and got us all a Joe’s, to make up for the fact that we weren’t going there.
Some of the games we played included one where we had to roll a dice, if we rolled a ‘6’ we could go to a table, put on a hat, scarf and gloves and then attempt to eat a bar of chocolate using only a knife and fork. This was really hard and the downside was that as soon as somebody else rolled a ‘6’ we had to stop and wait to see if we got another go. Some of us were really unlucky and never managed to get a chance at the chocolate, while others seemed to roll a ‘6’ every time.
To end the night we had a few games of Bingo. We were a bit unsure during the first few games of what to do but we eventually got the hang of it. We had a really good time. To make things a bit more exciting we all put £1 into a pot and the first person to call a ‘line’ on each game won £1.50, while the person to call ‘Bingo’ won £3.50. This certainly added an extra edge to the games. We think Mr Jones enjoyed being the caller a bit too much, but a Bingo night for the parents in school would be a great event for the HSA. Let us know what you think of this in the comments below.
We had a good day, even if we ended it a little wet, but are looking forward to getting wetter tomorrow when we are hopefully, fingers crossed, going body boarding in Caswell.
Thank you again for all of the comments on Twitter and on here. We are reading them to the children each morning, or as and when we see them and they really do bring a smile to their faces. Keep them coming, only a day and a half left to go.