Our final full day on residential has been another busy one. Thankfully, the weather was much kinder to us today; we even enjoyed some sunshine!
We enjoyed our breakfast before boarding a coach to travel to the village of Pant on the English/Welsh border. We found a gate which straddled the border of both countries - we were able to put one foot in Wales and one in England!
We split into two groups again. One group carried the climbing equipment and walked deep into the long abandoned limestone quarry. The instructors carefully set up the ropes before delivering an extensive safety briefing. Once we got into our harnesses, we abseiled 40 feet to the bottom of the quarry! The instructors then demonstrated how to climb back up the rock face to the top. We explored three different climbs, each increasing in difficulty.
We enjoyed our lunch in the heart of the quarry before swapping activities. We walked across a golf course to reach an even older quarry - a Roman copper mine! We got into protective clothing and donned our helmets before heading deep into the mine. We crawled our way through the mine until we reached the first chamber. On our journey, we saw a dozen bats and plenty of spiders! We used the skills that we had developed in the artificial caving earlier in the week.
At the end of the day, we walked back to the bus and returned to the centre. We enjoyed our final evening meal - a roast chicken dinner - before making our packed lunch for the following day. After dark, we completed an orienteering course around the centre grounds. We used a map to navigate our way around and punched holes in the record card.
When we had finished, we went back to our rooms and packed our bags ready to return to school the following day.
We have had a fantastic week on residential and are sad that it is coming to an end.
