Glara Mara – Take Us Back Please!

Travelling to the Lake District for our Sixth Form team building trip, all of us were completely curious as to what we should expect. We’d heard stories of previous trips from the Upper Sixth, but considering we were with Mr Allmand and Mr Austen, we were all still pretty concerned as to what they would try to put us through in order to ‘get us to know ourselves’.

Arriving at the Glara Mara accommodation, which I might add we all loved, we were instantly set team building tasks, these being Tree Climbing, the Spider’s Web, Orienteering, or Log Balancing. Needless to say the Tree Climbing received some pretty spectacular screams, with the most comical one possibly coming from the person who went first with violent leg kicking and loud screams at hand.   The Spider’s Web showed off some rather spectacular and unexpected gymnastic skills from fellow pupils and the Log Balancing also tested out coordination and team work… as well as giving us all some laughs.

On the morning of our second day we all went on a hike in different groups. The miserable weather made this perhaps less enjoyable than it had been in earlier years, but we were all able to talk and get to know people that perhaps we hadn’t really known before. In the afternoon, with the aid and bribery of Mr Austen, all of us made it across a 70 metre deep gorge on a Zip-Wire, again with several scream fests and amusing arm and leg actions. We also then had to rope walk back across the river, which tested our own self belief.

The evenings were occupied with dinner, talks from Mr Allmand about  University choices, preferred learning styles and our multiple intelligences (yes, apparently some of us have more than one!!), and then some very funny games.  The Chair Game was very enlightening and we all learnt a lot about each others previous exploits and habits…maybe too much in some cases!  On our last day the Lower Sixth were separated into different smaller groups and sent orienteering. The aim was to collect as many points as possible within the hour. This tested our strengths and weaknesses within our groups and our ability to adapt and work to our strengths as well as possible. With some stops at the children’s rope swing on the way, everyone did well at this, with four teams coming joint third and the winning team being James Roden, Emily Dyer, Rob Taylor, and Jordan McSally-Parson. 

Coming home the common phrase in the minibus was ‘please can we go back’ and I think that this shows just how much fun we had and how much we appreciated our trip. Huge ‘Thank You’s’  go to Mr Allmand, Mrs Russell, Mr Austen, and Mr Tempest for everything they did and if you need any people to help on the trip next year you won’t have to ask twice!

Emily Dyer  L6