Day 1 – Arriving to Camp (Blue Team)

Good evening from the Blue Team! Day 1 of Camp Survive and Save – The arrival day, we arrived along with other participants from the UK, Czech Republic and Germany at Margam Discovery Centre for camp 2015.

Once we arrived the fun began by playing a variety of games to help get to know one another. Games included the parachute, trying to get the ball off the opponent’s side, followed by Cones where one team turned cones upside down and the other team turned them upright, the winning team was the team with the most cones their way round. However, the down pour of rain stopped us, but as lifesavers we later came back to play more games. Then campers where introduced to the banana song, a very entertaining action song which they found hilariously fun! This was followed by speed dating, where participants were given 30 second to get to know everyone. This was followed by crazyyyyy races where the teams were only allowed a certain amount of body parts in their teams touching the floor and had to get to the other side. For example 6 feet, 6 hands and 2 knees. After that it was dinner time, we had curry, rice and naan bread. Delicious! What made it even better was seconds, and the tasty apple crumble for dessert. After dinner we finished off with some ice-breaker games including the skittle game (eating sweets) and bingo. We look forward to tomorrow! Yours, The Blue Team!

Sunday, 02 August 2015 (Gold Team)

16 of the adventuress campers decided to go on an organised run, some of the possibly more sensible members made the best of being able to sleep in. Breakfast was then at 8:00, the much needed cooked breakfast gave us the energy we needed to get through the day. For the day, we were placed into different groups to meet yet another set of new people. The activities included the orienteering challenge, which involved navigating through some woodland and trying our best to recover after losing radio contact! This required us to work as a team to get through the ropes as quickly as possible without touching them and it got very competitive between the different teams. The blind obstacle course was, well, an obstacle course when blindfolded. So we had to work with our team members to help them navigate around the course.

Around lunch we headed off to a pool to make sure everyone was able to cover elements of the bronze core syllabus including, personal safety, safe entries and shout and signal rescues. We started by getting the most challenging task out of the way at the beginning by swimming 200m in clothing, we followed that up with  a gentle 50m sprint, which we had to complete in under 1 minute. Follow that up with a couple of entries such as falling in, learning a couple of towing methods and practising with casualties then all of a sudden the main components are covered and all that is left for us to do is have a couple of scenarios to put what we have covered into practice.

Then for us, one thing you can’t forget about is lunch out on the grass and we were lucky enough to have lovely sunny weather. Then whilst everyone else made motivational cheers, we decided to lie on the ground, spelling the word GOLD for Gold Team! Then it was back to base to do some more activities.

Now we have finished off dinner and have some international presentations coming up for this evenings activities.

Monday 03 August, 2015  (Yellow Team)

Hello, Yellow team reporting in.

The day started with rounder’s in the rain at 7am! It was quite popular and helped work up an appetite for the players. Today was the first beach day – James says yay! The day was split into theory and practical work but unfortunately the practical work was cut short due to a strong rip current. The rescue practices were good fun though, and our acting skills were perfected when pretending to be panicking in the water! To warm ourselves up prior to getting in the sea, we played Sibylle’s version of rugby, where our traitor of an activities leader joined the opposing team. After getting out the cold sea and freezing wind, the 55 degree shower in the lifeguard hut was much needed. In the afternoon we talked through the theory of our course; we learnt about slips, trips and falls (and other risks) associated with hazards around open water, how to deal with shock and the SAFE code mnemonic. Finally we learnt how to throw a rope correctly, with our instructors showing us how they would compete.

We ended the day with a nice campfire, where we learnt more about our instructors and leaders. Everyone had a good time and had lots of laughs.

Yellow team, out.

Tuesday Blog Day 4, (Green Group)

Went on run by the castle, nice scenery.

First Aid, Life Support 1. Educational, helped as a reminder of stuff already done.

Egg flying, Ellen won. Using teamwork.

Treasure Hunt, nailed it because of being Welsh.

Made aeroplane in kite building.

Water carrying, Ian got wet, so did everyone.

Disco.

Straw tower, that happened.

Potato for lunch, and chicken burgers. Lack of toppings. Ice cream though.

Hopefully water is warm tomorrow, learn some stuff. Remember to take warm clothes.

All gained life support, new qualification. Except Ed, who is a pool lifeguard. Ed did the

Community instructor course so can now deliver classes.

The group is good, all DofE participants, except Ed.

Day 5 (Red Team)

We started off the morning playing rounders with some impressive performances. After that we ate breakfast without oggy oggy oggy, before we travelled to the beach, in a very quiet bus for once. When we arrived at the beach, we sang the “banana song” and did our team cheers before the groups separated into their different activities. Our red team was in the water first; it was very cold. After getting changed into wetsuits, we waited on Raja to get changed AGAIN! When he did come, we went straight to the beach and sprinted into the sea. After that, we practiced our rescues using torpedo bouys for our exam tomorrow. However, the waves were enormous and were crashing into us, making it exceedingly hard for us to practise. The current was also very strong making us quite tired. Next we went to the lifesaving base and we then practised some theory while we waited on Raja to have a shower and get changed. In the afternoon some of us went back into the sea for some Malibu boarding. Even though there were only small waves, it was still fun trying to sit on our knees and falling into the water again and again. As we walked back to the bus it started raining. Typical welsh weather. The bus was even quieter on the way home as we were all so tired! In the evening we talked about what we had learned and the experiences we have gained from camp. We also practised planning an exchange in the future – some were more feasible than others! We also discussed the possibility of leading camps in the future.

Red team, get your head in the game!

Day 6 (Silver Group)

Today we were doing the assessment for our bronze beach award. The wetsuits were still damp from the previous day but the water was warm and we started with a five-minute swim to warm up. The waves were a fair size so swimming out was problematic though this helped on the way back as we could catch the waves, reducing effort.

Second Assessment was incidents, only one each. Smurf got cold so we did a huddle. We had to do a sand sculpture competition. As the silver group we made human faces coming out of the sand to imitate quicksand. It was obviously the best but the judges didn’t notice.

After the comp there was a beach rendition of rounder’s with a cricket bat, it was good but didn’t last for long as we had spent so long on the sand sculptures.

Silver, silver, silver oh, I was like silver, silver, silver oh, we will always be second, second.