Hello this is Daniel and Daniyal
                                       Today was a great day. The teachers woke us up and we started by getting dressed and brushing our teeth. We all met in the main lounge and we were told our activities. Group B and A went to the caves and group C went to go canoeing and climbing.
       After breakfast we went to the kit room and into the cave section. We grabbed our suits and wellies and got into the bus and headed off. We got to the car park and put on the helmets and went straight to the caves, it was rocky and we tried very hard to get to our destination which was the caves. At one point we had to walk next a mini pond which was greenish.
                                     We arrived at one of the caves. It had lots and lots of rocks and water. It was really dark and spooky. We had a little explore for around about 10 minutes. We only went half way and we left the caves but it was a little bit hard but we all made it out alive!!!
                                      Then we headed to the bus to have lunch. I had hot squash and so did the others. Then we left to go to the next cave and we were in there for at least 2 hours which was long. But is all worth it because we did the toilet challenge, all of us we were aloud to have our lights on. We found marble which was cool and fossils. The fossils were in the ground for at least 200 million years old wow. The water was really strong and was pushing your feet but it was cold.
                                       When we got out of the cave we were all freezing some of us thought we had hyperthermia but we never. We headed right back to the bus and got changed into our spare clothes. Then we left and headed home (Gilwern). Then we had our evening meal which was a Christmas special or fish fingers with mash potatoes and beans. 30 minutes later we have our showers and hot Chocolate.
                                       Tomorrow we are all going hill walking and then heading back to school.
                                     


                                           

Group C's Day 3

      Hi guys, it's Holly and Abbas. We are going to tell you about our day today and if we were you we would keep reading because today was a life threatening experience.
      Yesterday we ended the day with hot chocolate and "I'm a celebrity get me out of here!" Which triggered an amazing night sleep. Guess what- everyone was quiet and went to sleep and got up at the right time.This meant we were all ready and active for the day ahead. Firstly, we travelled to the dining room and tucked into our breakfast at 8:00. Breakfast was amazing, we had cereal, toast and cooked breakfast (waffles, beans, sausages and bacon). We do wish our mums could cook like those cooks! The food was delicious and the waffles were even better. When we got back to the dormitories it was a race against time to clean our rooms. I (Abbas) was really excited to go climbing and canoeing but I (Holly) was kind of missing home but I was very excited for the day as well. Room inspection went pretty well and the girls beat the boys 9.5 to 9.25!YES!!!
      Together we were wearing up to 9 layers but we ended up freezing because the climbing wall was so cold. Also we went crate stacking and it was really fun as we played Jenga with crates. We were both in the same group in crate stacking along with Caitlin. We'd reckon we got pretty high. Afterwards when the crate stack was knocked over and we flew in the air as our hearts stopped. Holly, Caleb, Seren and Kaysha reached the top of the climbing wall. By the way the climbing wall was really intimidating and we thought it was going to fall over. Thomas H. really tried hard having a go and Taha persevered when trying to reach the top. Even Miss Smith got stuck in ! I remember when I (Holly) was coming down I twisted behind the wall where people couldn't see me and everyone was laughing. Next we enjoyed our lunch, put on our wellies and waterproofs and set off to the canal.
     As soon as we got there we had to unload the boats and carry them to the river which looked more like a ice skating rink. The canal was full with ice so we spent half of the time breaking it and then at the end we got a chance to jump in. Rick, our instructor, said that the water was around -10 degrees Celsius but some people were still up for it. Liam, Kaysha, Thomas H., Holly and Keiran slid into the freezing water. It was so cold and nippy that I thought I would be frozen alive. We ran back to the bus and travelled back home for dinner. Straight away our chicken roast dinner warmed us up and we tucked in to some desert which was raspberry ice cream and chocolate muffin. Finally, we came back and started writing this blog for you. Hope you enjoyed it and wish us luck for our last day tomorrow. BYE!!!
         
               

Day 3

Day 3 in Gilwern

Hi it's Jameelah and Nico

Today we woke up and got ready to go to the caves. We went to get our caving suit and our wellies to wear when we are caving. In the cave we found a fish the cave was also very wet .The waterfalls in the  cave were smashing. The cave was so dark that you could not see your hand in front of your face when we turned the lights out on our helmets. The water was so deep! There was loads of big rocks. We had lunch and hot chocolate. The hot chocolate was refreshing! Sometimes Miss Burt had to encourage us to keep going, especially me (Jameelah) but she preserved and had a fab time. It was quite hard to walk as we could not see the rocks our feet were soaking. We did lots of challenges in the cave and the hardest challenge the white line. The white line challenge was quite difficult for our group, but we managed it. All of us did lots of challenges and we deserved hot squash but first we took of our wet clothes and got changed. We were freezing.😓  All of us went onto the bus enjoyed our hot squash and we went back to base. 

Gilwern day 2

Gilwern day 2

         Today we had to wake up at 7:00 to get ready for the day ahead.We had cereal and full Welsh breakfasts, then we all came back to the dormentrys and we were told what we had to do for the day.  Team A were climbing and canoeing, team B did the same but in a different orders, team C went caving. We had a room inspection after we tidied up our mess from yesterday. Taff and Usk (the room names) had a cleaning score of 8.75 but the girls room Wye only had 8. Whilst caving team C had a lot of fun .We had to follow a lot of rules and it was quite cold . There was a lot of nooks and crannies, there was a very fun bit called the letterbox. We all pushed Ellis down it. Later we had dinner and we had spaghetti bolenese 🍝and jacket potato with a variety of different toppings it was very nice. Tomorrow we are canoeing and climbing, we can't wait. 

Hello our names are Logan and Phillip. We have been doing lots of activities like the climbing wall and we are doing lots more. Our favourite thing is canoeing because we got splashed a lot but the only down side was that we weren't allowed to jump in because the water was freezing and icy.The climbing was very easy and the crate stacking was hard, because we had to balance on each other and try not to push each other off. Having and Imogen spent most of her time screaming.
Dinner tonight was spaghetti bolognese, we liked it apart from the mushrooms 😛.
Tomorrow we are going caving, we are really looking forward to doing the letter box challenge.

     Hi it's Harry and Reuben from Group B- Day 2
     We woke up at 7:00am  then we had a lovely cooked breakfast and cereal it was delicious. After 40 minutes of explaining what we were doing today, we finally got set to go canoeing we got waterproofs on and as we walked to the bus we saw 6 canoes tied to the back. We got soaked, it was freezing. We splashed everybody and Miss Hurved was laughing at us .We had a lot of games Hivay fell in the canel. We had a race and team 1 (our group) won.
     Then in the afternoon we went climbing we had to wear helmets, then we were strapped to a extremely strong rope and we had to balance on 8 layers of crates. Then we went on a climbing wall the absailed down.                                  
     We had an amazing time and we are looking forward to caving tomorrow. 

Hi everybody Seren and Kieran here from group C.
                When I (Seren) went on the bus I felt a bit nervous, because I have never spent so long away from home before, but I was so excited because what's better than going on holiday with your best friends? I was a bit sad when I waved to my mum and my sister and brother. My (Kieran's) feelings were sad,exited and quite happy because I heard we were going caving and canoeing.
               When I (Seren) got off the bus I felt more exited and less sad,we rolled our suitcases outside the centre and we chatted about what we will be doing in the couple of days. Then we took our cases in our dorms. Later on we went outside and sorted out some lunch and wet gear ready for tomorrow. Then we did some activities, we did some team building games. We did an invisible maze, and many more games. We both really enjoyed it.
               Our dinner tonight was a choice of pizza, chicken burger and halal chicken and we enjoyed it a lot. We had our dinner and I had pizza and chips it was really nice then we went to our dornentrees.
This was Kieran's and Serens adventure at Gilwern for day 1. We can't wait to see what's tommorow.

🌲Gilwern🌲

Day1                                                                                                                                       28/11/16

Hey its Havin and Imogen!We arrived here at Gilwern today and so far we are really enjoying ourselves.We got here at about 10:30 this morning on a bus.Then,we put our stuff in our rooms. Some time after we had a big long group talk about safety rules also why we were are here and lots of other things too. After all that boring stuff we went out side to another building to get fitted with wellies, waterproof jackets and trousers. Then into another building to make our sandwiches. Then we did some really fun activities.These activities we did in groups of 12. Me and Havin are in group A together. We had to collect money (not real money though when they said it wasn't real me and Havin were really disappointed) and who ever had the most money with there groups got to buy rockets at the end and got to launch them and catch them with a parashoot. Our dinner was at 5 o'clock and we could have a chicken burger or pizza. I choose pizza and Havin choose chicken burger. For pudding we had ice cream and a mini chocolate donut. Group A had to clean so we did, it was so clean and shinny. Now we are chilling in our main room writing this for all of you reading this.Thank you to Miss Burt, Miss Hurved and Miss Smith for giving up their time to come to something like this for us.

From Imogen and Havin xx

Gilwern

Hello this is Morgan and Thomas, at the moment we are enjoying it. We started of with the bus,it was very boring but when we got here we unpacked our stuff and made our beds. Our first activity was some challenges the first one is stepping stone the rules were you could not fall on the gravel or 5 points gone and if there is a block left for 3 secs it goes and you need to place the blocks as you go. The best one was when the team needed to lift people up and they need to hit there head on a ball. Then we had lunch we made our sandwiches and we could pick a pack of crisps and 3 biscuits.We also did a game after called the labyrinth and it was a wooden board maze and it had holes in it. We had to navigate the ball with strings and not let it fall through the holes. Then we got back ate tea, played on our electronics and completed this blog. We are looking forward to having some free time with our friends and having a good nights sleep. Hot chocolate and cookies soon 😀.