On Friday 26^th February Miss Lloyd, Mr Jaep and 9 mighty world challengers set off for a fun-filled day at Oakerwood Leisure Centre. Leaving school at 8:30 in walking boots and tracksuit bottoms, we sat in the famous St. Thomas Aquinas mini bus and wondered what the day would bring. We arrived at Oakerwood and entered on our journey to find the codes and open the mysterious treasure chest which, to our dismay, seemed to be floating on a raft in the middle of a lake. We then took part in lots of team building activities such as, Jacob's Ladder, Spider's Web, ‘The Toxic Triangle' and ‘Water Shortage'. Miss Lloyd certainly did the whole team proud on the ‘Leap of faith', while Liam, Rosie, Martha and John showed great courage on Jacob's Ladder (whilst they screamed like babies!). We all showed great team spirit and completed each challenge with (ok, I admit it) some difficulty but we always seemed to get there in the end. Well, through all our fear and hard work, we managed to gather all of the clues for the final challenge: the building of the raft.

At this point, I realised the majority of us wouldn't make very good scouts, as our tying skills seemed to let us down; however ‘Toby' (our team leader) was there at our rescue. After a face full of water and an awful lot of paddling, we managed to retrieve what we'd all been working towards - the treasure chest. We typed in the codes we had worked so hard for, and the anticipation hit us hard. Bracing ourselves, we opened the lid and there we saw more than we could have ever wished for.... a nice box of Quality Street! As our excitement died down, we shared our prize and reflected on the fun we'd had.

The day was a success; we had made bonds which each member of the group and we had worked as a team whilst co-operating with each other so that we could achieve what we wanted to - and last, but not least, we'd had fun. I mean, who wouldn't have? Seeing Miss Lloyd fall over twice in the wet, ‘gloopy' mud was enough to make my week!

Written by Emma Harwood