ARDALES TRIP FEB 2002

The pupils from Year 9 spent three days at Parque Ardales during which time they where supervised by HND Adventure Tourism Management students from the Birmingham College of Food, Tourism & Creative Studies (BCFTCS). This is a post 'A' Level course, which involves two years of academic study and four residentials in the UK and Spain organised by the Anglesey Sea & Surf Centre (ASSC). The students receive training in Mountain Leadership, Rock Climbing, and Kayaking & Canoeing from the ASSC Staff. Instructors from the ASSC and the BCFTCS accompany the students to Spain for four weeks. The Birmingham students are responsible for the planning and implementation of a range of outdoor activities. These include Abseiling, Campcraft, Canoeing & Team Building Exercises. The Birmingham students are supervised by the ASSC Instructors who are responsible for the safety of the children during the course of the activities. The Instructors and College staff assess the students in terms of their coaching and management skills.

A 'Student's Eye' View After an hour and a half coach ride through the beautiful countryside of Spain, we arrived at Ardales. With no-one knowing what to expect or what would happen, we stepped off the coach into the woodland of El Chorro. There waiting for us were the funky, fun filled, groovy dancing monitors from Birmingham college, smiling at us, hoping we had brought the first nice, fattening food that they had seen in a long time. We were all shown to our chalets which consisted of one bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and a sofa-bed in the living room, not forgetting the excellent balconies with panoramic views of the woodland and the lake. After a few hours to sort ourselves out and settle in, we finally started our first activity. Having left school at 9.30 and arrived at 11.00 we were ready for anything. We set off blindfolded, to experience losing one of our senses, our eyesight, and had to trek through a number of mountainous obstacle tracks. In the morning we all got up early, collected our raw eggs, bacon tomatoes, you name it, and we had to cook it ourselves! Then we met at the meeting place at the top of the hill where we were split into groups of about 10. Our four activities were canoeing, abseiling, team building and campcraft. During the three days we had planned out, by far the best was. . . all of them! No one activity stood out as better than the others, some were more 'gut thrilling' than others but everything was excellent. I enjoyed abseiling a lot, it was thrilling and fun. Canoeing was a laugh, my team just could not get the hang of it, and, when we did, our monitors thought it would be hilarious for us to experience the freezing water by making us jump from one boat to another until we fell in!! Campcraft taught us to be more aware of our environment and how to look after ourselves and our colleagues. Teambuilding involved a lot of co-operation and patience. We had to complete a number of strange tasks which involved the whole team working together to achieve our goal. Lunch and dinners varied each day and on the last night we had a BBQ and played 'Blind Date'!! This was by far the best trip ever and we wouldn't have missed it for the world, there were even a few tears shed on the coach back home. Year 9 are in process of persuading our wonderful, good natured P.E. teachers, Mr & Mrs Izatt, to take us back next year. Thank you Mr & Mrs Izatt for making the trip well worth it!! Tanya Francis Click on pictures to see enlargements.