Into the Wild

Last Wednesday, seventeen Year 8 students set off on an 'Into the Wild' adventure when they visited the Walton Firs Activity Centre, in Cobham!  The purpose of the trip was to work together to develop teamwork, communication skills and resilience through a range of challenges in an unfamiliar environment. 

Fraser has helped to write a recount of their adventure.

As soon as we arrived, some of us were sent to the cave and we tackled our nerves by heading straight in! It was a challenge navigating the low ceilings and narrow walls, not to mention all of the twists and turns which the caves were made up of. Harry commented, "It was good that we got to wear helmets in the cave, so we didn't bang our heads!" Working with our partner, we relied on good communication skills to guide and steer each other safely round the cave and finally out into the daylight! Fraser was adamant that he was not going into the cave but overcame his fears and was soon to be seen crawling around after his friends in a caterpillar! Francis enjoyed his time in the cave too!

Afterwards, we moved on to the climbing wall. This time we worked as a team of four to support and hold the climber as they made their way up the challenging, towering wall. Francis said: "I enjoyed the climbing wall because I got to go up really high and sail down!" It was impressive to see students conquer their fears and show resilience; pushing themselves to go higher on their second climb whilst being encouraged by their enthusiastic friends below. Lucie commented, "My whole target was to get to the top of the climbing wall, which I did twice!" 

Another enjoyable activity was crate stacking where we worked together to build the highest tower we could whilst standing on top of it! Two students held the climber whilst another built two towers with the climber traversing up them. The challenge arose when the builder could no longer reach the top to add more crates, so we came up with the ingenious idea to lift the lower crates and insert new crates into the towers to make them taller. Tilly climbed the highest and managed an impressive height of 13 crates before the crates tumbled to the ground! 

A final and favourite activity of students and adults alike was learning to throw the tomahawks. This was much harder than it looked and required plenty of perseverance and patience from most of us, although Angel, Arsenii and Francis proved to be naturals!

During the day we also took part in group activities which challenged us as we learnt to find solutions to the problems presented to us. All in all, we had a great day in the wild and came away feeling proud of our achievements, having honed our skills and even making some new friends along the way!