It’s day three in Castleton and there were many sleepy and blurry eyes at the 7am wakeup call this morning. Nevertheless, the sun was shining; the smell of a full English breakfast wafted down the corridor and was a big motivation to drag those tired limbs out of bed. There was also some frantic tidying before room inspections this morning: it seemed like there had been laundry bombs go off overnight. Breakfast went down an absolute treat as always with many children making the most of all the food on offer and I think many had a four-course breakfast: cereal, cooked breakfast, toast, and yoghurt!  

After food, it was off to activities. Now on their second full day, the children are into their routines and were ready and waiting for their instructors in record time so far! Over on the lake, raft building and the follow-up races disturbed the slumber of the fish in the pond and despite some dubious knot tying and barrel placement, amazingly all rafts floated their teams successfully across the water. Many rafts did, however, travel in circles to begin with as groups worked out that paddling out of synch was not conducive to travelling in straight lines! On the high ropes, many children showed great courage in scaling the leap of faith pole and launching themselves at the trapeze or walking across the wobbly bridge, whilst on the back field many bullseyes were struck in archery. Many groups happily scrambled through holes up on the Tors and squeezed through holes adults would be lucky to fit just their legs through. One adventurous group opted for a hands-on lesson in geography field work and learnt how to navigate using an actual paper map (Google maps was 100% not allowed) to make their way through the village of Castleton and find specific points their instructor asked them to. We can confirm that even with some getting a little lost along the way, all children made their way back to the centre and have joined the rest of us once again.  

It has been great to hear from instructors how their group’s, teamwork, listening skills and confidence have really developed over the last couple of days and we hope that Thursday will be the best day yet!