St Mary's Calne
Last Friday, in glorious Spring weather the LIV and MIV set off from Broad Hinton to walk through the equally lovely North Wiltshire countryside at the start of the annual walk and camp as part of their Challenge and Adventure programme. This St Mary’s Calne perennial event had a new twist this year as it was based at H5 Adventure’s site, where the girls would undertake a series of team and individual challenges. The six kilometre walk to the site was just the start, with lessons in map reading and navigation enroute resulting in all of the teams arriving at the site, eventually!
After a well-deserved lunch the next task was for the girls to set up their camp for the next two days. Under the supervision of H5’s instructor’s tents were pitched around the beautiful lake and sleeping bags were laid out for the night to come. Then it was off to a carousel of activities that included bridge building, shelter building and backwoods cooking.
The bridge building was perhaps the most eventful for the teams, with a number of girls ending up in the water after trying very hard to make the crossing, but alas losing their balance on the way!
Shelter building was a competition which resulted in a wide variety of design and build concepts, some worthy of Grand Designs! Backwoods cooking started with a lesson in fire lighting the hard way, with no matches, and the girls all successfully achieved the challenge, and enjoyed cooking popcorn and chocolate bananas in their fire pits.
In the evening, the inevitable highlight was hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows, with bats giving a flying display overhead, and leading to a highly entertaining talent show by the girls.
LIV and MIV returned to school on Saturday tired but with a sense of achievement and having thoroughly enjoyed their 2025 CAA walk and camp.
Mr Simon Carter, Director of Co-Curriculum