Whalsay School 2019 experiences

On Wednesday the 24th and Thursday the 25th of April P7 went on their John Muir trips. DAY ONE On the 1st day of John Muir we went to Kergord. We went out on the 9:15 ferry, and came in on the 14:45 ferry; The ferry was running to Vidlin. We drove to Kergord on a minibus. The guy who was coming with us was called John, he gave us all a waterproof jacket and a backpack with a number sewn onto it, my number was 28, we were to put our waterproof and our packed lunch into our rucksack. We walked up into the trees and the guide told us to sit down, he told us to smell the grass and I didn’t smell anything, he told us to smell the dirt, I didn’t smell anything. We left our rucksacks and walked on some logs over ditches and climb trees. We retrieved our rucksacks and had a lay down and listened to the sounds of the forest. We then walked into a ruined, roofless house and had our packed lunch. John started a fire and we ate. After that we were split into 2 groups. He told us to make waterproof dens in our groups. My group found a tree that was raised by another tree but stable. We began to put long logs and sticks vertically leaning on the fallen tree. I had an idea to use dead plants to waterproof the hut, but then we found some bark and decided to use the dead plants for the inside and put the bark on the roof. Three of the group went and found logs and sticks and me and my friend positioned them, we decided to move them together and I went and collected some bark. We got really sweaty so took off our jackets and hung them on a snapped branch. We didn’t have enough time and we had to leave our den unfinished. But we played the worlds best game, a game in which the ‘it’ person counts from 50 down in a circle of rucksacks and everyone must hide. After the ‘it’ person has found everyone they can they count from 40 and all the people still in must move closer, and so on until they are going to count down from 20 where you must take a run from where your hiding and try to touch the circle. If you can’t then you have to find a hiding place and then really the same as 10 seconds. We drove back to the ferry and went home. DAY TWO On the 2nd day we went to Fladdabister and we walked to the mills. We went out and in on the same ferries as the first day. We walked north for a while and we walked to this burn branching off the loch. John gave us a break and we had some of our packed lunches. We walked alone across the river for a while until we all met up again and we put on some hard hats. We went for a bit of a scramble over some rocks and it was really fun. After that we walked up a hill to a trig point and we were all exhausted. But we weren’t finished yet, we walked back down the hill and up another hill. John took us one at a time to look over a cliff with birds nesting on it. We walked down from the cliff and up a final hill. We sat and had our packed lunch, we walked all the way back to the bus and went home.