Dear Parents

We hope to update you here by 10.00pm each day but please bear with us – there are activities each evening and time is often tight.

For this evening, we can report simply on a very good day, spent in glorious Welsh sunshine.

We have just got back from a night walk – involving everyone gearing up with walking boots and hi-viz jackets and setting off from the Centre up a steep wooded escarpment.  On the way, our course leader George pointed out the peaks of Twmpa and Hay Bluff and called for silence as we listened to the dusk chorus and watched the bats circling.  At the summit we lay in the grass and listened to…nothing…as the Black Mountains and the Beacons stretched out in front of us.  Right on cue, as we turned to make our way back down, a beautiful full moon rose from behind the forest.  Truly awe-inspiring and sights and sounds that are not always available back in Sonning Common.

This afternoon was spent on team-building activities around the site.  This has the dual purpose of getting the groups working together and introducing them to the wonders of the Woodlands campus.  Our focus this week is on them showing leadership, teamwork and trying to get them to solve many of their simpler problems by working it out themselves or asking a friend.

The on-site activities include 11 children standing on a narrow plank and then re-arranging themselves in age order without falling off, or ringing a bell high above their heads (without falling over) and climbing a sheer wall which initially seems too high to even reach.  Lots of discussion, plenty of argument, and eventually success, in most cases.  They also learn to work with the group members with whom they are spending the week.

Dinner was chicken nuggets and chips followed by apple pie.  Most of it went down very well indeed.

And the journey?  Flawless, with an excellent coach and driver, a very good passage out of the Reading rush hour, a stop at Leigh Delamere, and the final fifty miles winding through Raglan, Crickhowell and Glasbury.

As you can imagine there was plenty of excitement (and a tiny bit of noise…) on the coach, especially as we got closer.  As we write now (9.30pm), the house has quietened and there is a sense of anticipation about the activities on offer tomorrow.  We will report on canoeing, caving and climbing tomorrow evening.

Best wishes from us all at Woodlands.