A fantastic trip to the Arete Centre 2023!

A huge well done to all of our students for testing themselves on the Arete Outdoor Centre trip. They were taken well out of their ‘comfort zones’ but all accomplished the challenge amazingly. They were all a credit to the school and themselves.

Here is the story of the day:

So we had a delayed start as one of the members of staff bike blew a puncture on the way to school and had to be picked up, but by 7.40 we were underway. Once we left the Wirral, we were treated to everyone's favourite songs on the bus and certain people singing along. Lucky we don’t have a school choir! We stopped for breakfast and then was soon on our way.

We had to make a slight detour to make contact with school about potential issue but that was soon rectified and we arrived at the Arete centre by 10.00am. We were greeted by our instructors and told that we would be doing “sea wall traversing’. No one had done this before and we need a harness and a ’Cows tail'. Some of the group wanted to jump in the sea afterwards and were issued with wetsuits and helmets. We then drove to the far side of Anglesey for Sea Wall traversing. We were instructed on how to put a harness on and connect the cow’s tail to our harness.

The cows tail keeps connected to the rope at all times. We were taught the technique of clipping and unclipping, so we could climb around the bay. We arrived at small bay, with a course laid out including one part across the bay about 3 m above the water. Brendan and Harrison were first off and were flying and it was good to see Brendan taking on a mentoring role with Harrison and showing him how and where to put his feet to complete the course. Meanwhile josh was following working out how to do it and again helping Jacob with his climb. Both Jacob and Daisy found this climbing challenging, but with guidance from staff and the other students, completed the course.

Sam and Ollie were supportive with all students and ensured that everyone was successful. Colin found the course physically demanding and totally understood Daisy and Jacob fears. But all staff and students completed, including the rope across the gap. Daisy was an expert at this and showed everyone how to do it, Colin and Jacob less so, but still got across.

We had lunch on top of the cliff overlooking the sea and watching the RAF rescues service carrying out operations with the helicopter. The brave souls who wanted to jump in, put on their wetsuits and after a few issues of not knowing what way they want on and a few issues squeezing in, they were ready to go.

They then had to climb down a rock face to get to a point to jump in, which all did successfully, but it did look and felt cold.Then they had to get in change back int their clothes to travel home in the open air. But in fairness, they just got on with it and got on the bus to go back to the Arete centre. The journey home was uneventful, apart we had planned to stop for Tea, but Greggs was shut!. We arrived back at 6.40pm and at the end of a very successful day. Well done on a great day, that challenged everyone, and was completed.