Woodlands Outdoor Education Centre.

Glasbury, Powys.

12th June 2025

Dear Parents, 

“Shhh! Be quiet!” 

It’s way past our bedtime, but we’ve just crept downstairs and found the teachers snoring in the staff room. All six of them! Can you believe it – surrounded by empty chocolate and crisp packets? We wore them out this evening (with our enthusiasm for packing) and they couldn’t take it any more! 

Miss Pepper was in charge of clearing out the cloakroom and we totally gave her the runaround! She just couldn’t keep up with the efficiency of our clearing up! Mrs Simic was responsible for one of those ‘interesting’ evaluation surveys that even she thought was dull and she actually fell asleep before the end of it. Dr Loader and Mr Coates ran the boutique Woodlands retail outlet but couldn’t do the maths whilst adding up the cash we had spent and had to go for a lie-down to recover.  Oh, and we locked Mr Coates in the shop – he’s probably still there.  Mrs Densham lit a fire and is now suffering the results of woodsmoke inhalation and finally Mr Witcomb was ‘in charge’ of everything.  The world’s most impossible job!  He was last seen sadly trudging off over the Beacons.

But guess what?  They left their computer on! 

We checked on the rubbish they’ve been writing this week. Honestly! So boring! Caving this, climbing that! Walking up, walking down! Canoeing left, canoeing right! Eating this, eating nothing, and yes, eating Vienetta.  Yawn! 

So here’s the real truth about Woodlands – from us, your little darlings! 

Basically its awesome, amazing, sick and wicked! 

You get to run around this massive place with your friends – you can go anywhere as long as you don’t go in the river or the stream and the site is huge! Last night was orienteering (again, yawn…) but actually it was really cool – you had to read a map and punch these little cards all round the site, and tonight we did shopping and had games round the campfire and stuff.  Oh yes, and ‘packing’.  I seem to have a completely different set of clothes from what I brought with me!  How does that work?  Oh well, it’ll turn up in the end.

Caving is sooo scary! We went through the Donald Duck and the Toilet – you have to squeeze yourself down and then up again through these tiny holes. Dr Loader was ‘advised’ not to even try it!  Wonder why! But it was easy for us – we flew through. Then a drip went down my neck and when I sat down to empty my wellies all the water flew up my trouser leg. When I got out of my cave suit it stank – but not nearly as bad as the drying room! 

The sad teachers live in the drying room! They’re trying to get it emptied and as hard as they try it just gets fuller!  It stinks of wet dirty clothes – actually I love it! This evening I found clothes in there I didn’t even know I had brought with me. Maybe I should have changed a little bit more often. 

The instructors are so nice to us.  Within fifteen nanoseconds they knew all our names.  My instructor is called Dylan.  Dr Loader tried to tell us that he was a poet or something.  Totally lost on us.  He’s nice but today I did something wrong and he called me a doughnut!

He called me a grapefruit!  And me a flapjack!

‘That’s nothing, I was a sausage!’

Teachers are strange you know. Just when you’re wide awake at 10.00pm they make you go to bed, and then, just when you are fast asleep at 7.00am they make you get up. Weird! When do they actually sleep themselves? Maybe they don’t? All I know is that they are always there, and actually, they are quite helpful. If we are happy they are happy too, and if we are sad they are kind to us and help us. Quite often what they do is ask us to talk to a friend of ours – that always works wonders and we feel better. 

The dining room is carnage! So loud that Dr Loader has to make us ‘show five’ about every three seconds! He tells us about how we should eat our food and not put salt on our cornflakes or eat spaghetti hoops with our fingers or balance our spoons on our noses in public. Not fair. Then Mr Witcomb or Mr Coates get up and make some lame joke. We all giggle politely pretending it’s funny! 

I’ll tell you one thing though – climbing harnesses give you a wedgie! And high ropes aren’t high at all! Some of us spent nearly two hours on a tree and although it sounds a lot, actually we were really proud to have done that. We saved our friends and some of them were really scared. In my group everyone made it across the scariest parts and that was totally cool and awesome. 

We have to do jobs every morning! Boo! We’ve learned how to lay the table and do washing up and put everything in recycling. It’s awful and one thing is for sure – we are not doing it when we get back! 

Canoeing is another really cool thing – although to start with you go round in circles. The nasty instructors make us pair up boy and girl so it is always your partner’s fault! Actually by the end of the day we were going really fast and the games we played were brilliant! At the end we got to jump in the canal but man it was freezing. I’m sure I got frostbite and hypothermia! 

Every morning Mr Coates comes round to inspect our rooms. The best score so far is 10/10 and one (boys’) room managed to get 2/10 this morning. Well what did they expect – they hadn’t used the shelves at all, just emptied their suitcases onto the floor! 

To finish the week, Mr Witcomb reminded us to change our clothes this evening, and to take that little bit of silver foil off the end of our toothpaste tube.

Phew!

Just in time. 

Well we’d better go now – four are snoring but one of them is waking up!  

Lots of love and we can’t wait to see you tomorrow! 

From…

Felix, Toby, Teddy, Jon, Zach, Sam, Leonardo, Jack, Teddy, Romeo, Ethan, Will, Bella, Scarlett, Lucy, Bay, Phoebe, Serenna, Meghan, Georgie, Hazel, Alejandra, Emily-Rose, Bethany, Sienna, Lexy, Georgie, Maia, Hana, Scarlett, Scarlett, Sylvie, Ella, Olivia, Camden, Toby, Jago, William, Albert, Sebastian, Liam, Jack, Corey, Jonah, Freddie, Oscar, Noah, James, Mason, Donnie, Jack, Louie, Adam and Levi.

xxxx 

p.s. they’re quite annoyed actually!  Oops!  They say they’ve sent you another message which they say is really IMPORTANT!!!

p.p.s. teachers always say that.