Some of our youngsters recently spent time at the Alladale outdoor education center learning important social and outdoor skills. This is the second year that we have run this hugely popular trip and judging by the positive feedback from those who attended it is likely not to be the last!

We asked one of our youngsters, Hope Allan, to write a diary of her trip…

Day 1

When we arrived at Alladale we were greeted by the leaders, Bec, George, Charlie and Smithy. Once all our kit was sorted out we started walking. We were split into two groups with two adults and a teacher each. We began walking to our first camp for the night which took us about 45 minutes to an hour. We picked out spots for our tents and began waiting for our kit to come. When our kit arrived we started getting set up for the night, this included putting up tents, making a fire, starting to make dinner and collecting water. In our camp we got split into three different groups, one group would go collect water, one would make a fire and the other would be cooking food. 

Day 2 
In the morning we would wake up and get breakfast and then take down our tents and pack up our kit to get ready for the day ahead. We had to clear up the whole camp to get ready to move. The second day’s activity involved a lot of walking. We walked for a couple of hours and then we came to this big mountain which we had to climb. Climbing the mountain took about an hour and then once we were at the top we had to climb down the other side! When we got to the bottom of the mountain we were pretty much at our second camp. This camp brought both groups together which was good fun.

Day 3
On day three our activity was gorge walking, which is basically walking up a rocky river that has water running down it. We had to pack up our tents as usual and then get wet suits on for going up the gorge. The gorge was quite steep when climbing it but it was a lot of fun. When the gorge walking was finished we all walked back to camp and got dried, changed and then headed off to our next camp.

It was quite a long walk to the next camp but this camp had a little badger hut with benches in it to sit on. The cooking team were lucky this time as they got to cook in the badger hut.

Days 4 & 5
On our fourth day the sleeping pattern was a bit different from the rest of the days. When we packed up camp and started walking to our next camp, we joined back up with the other group and our tents got taken away from us all. On the last night we slept under tarps, no tents. The tarps were connected to the trees and came down at an angle to cover half of us. Sleeping under the tarp wasn’t as good as a tent! Our activity that day was archery. We had some competitions and it was really good fun. But best of all was singing most of the night to music we played through someones Bluetooth speaker!

On our last day we packed our tarps up and got ready for going home. We made lunch and then headed off. When we saw the bus a lot of us started running as we missed home so much! We said goodbye to the leaders who helped us so much. It was a great experience and I would definitely go back!

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