Nevertheless, despite that the convoy of vehicles were able to make their way to the campsite on Saturday morning - thankfully not quite as early as in 2005, since the campsite was already set up for us! When I say “set up”, I mean it had been used by another group the week before, and so was still there for us. However, this group was a certain other Company in the Battalion (no names mentioned) so a bit of maintenance was needed!
The camp itself featured a lot of the traditional activities, however as a boy I’d been used to everyone being sent to bed at a certain time and being told to be quiet at night, and being woken up by an eager Officer in the morning. However this year was my first year on the other side of the divide, so I had to get used to getting up earlier and going to bed later!
Despite that, the week included a lot of opportunities for everyone to go into Sheringham, even if we did have to walk over this to get there:
There was the opportunity in town for people look around the shops and go into the arcade places! There were also plenty of trips out, for example a trip to the Hill Top Centre which was a high ropes course. After the experiences of the assault course from last time, we had a home made one at the campsite instead which was maybe just as bad!
Each evening featured a short session of devotions, once again taken by Lewis Pearson, youth worker at Winchmore Hill Baptist Church.
On Tuesday there was also a trip to Cromer, as well as a session of go-karting at a track nearby. The main trip out was on Wednesday, where we once again took a trip to Pleasurewood Hills, near Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. While it was good a few years ago, it has deteriorated just a bit since then and features large areas of open space - there was so little to do compared to before that we even resorted to watching the sea lions show! That evening there was also a trip to Great Yarmouth to go bowling and watch fireworks.
There were also some trips to the beach, as well as free time to play games, and other activities such as a quiz, swimming, pitch and putt etc. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t exactly what you’d usually expect from July and August (it was sunny the day we got there and the day we got home, and rained most of the time in between). This led to a bit of amusement when the camp next to us discovered their tents weren’t put up brilliantly, and less so when the girls’ tent on our camp nearly took off, and the wash tent collapsing in the middle of the night! However, regardless of the weather everyone still made the most of what was another enjoyable week of camping. We were able to pack up to go home on Saturday afternoon, just as the sun was coming out…
Written by Tom Boorman