Camp

Monday August 27th ten kids aged 11 to 15 arrived for camp. Instructor for the camp was Laura Jones Griffiths who arrived on Monday morning dressed in a very fetching Canary Yellow. First task of the day was to fetch horses in from field, groom, wash tails and plait. The Traditional camp lunch going back about ten years now and consists of ham or cheese sandwhichs, jam doughnuts, mini rolls or apples, crisps and squash. After Lunch the kids had a flatwork lesson and a fun lesson til about 4pm. Then put out the horses, cleaned stables and cleaned tack. Salad and BBQ for tea, then I rode my horse while Leigh and Amelia ran a quiz and treasure hunt, Everything going well so far. I agreed that the kids could bring a chocolate fountain plus chocolate, bananas and marshmallows to camp, thinking this would be a simple thing, (I was mistaken) I did not realise this fountain would require electricity and a considerable amount of setting up and really needed to be done in the kitchen. Consequently I had 4 teenagers melting and stirring numerous large bars of chocolate in my kitchen, apparently the chocolate has to be thinned to work properly so they added copious amounts of cooking oil. As they needed to keep it plugged in and could hardly eat it outside I ended up with 14 kids in my kitchen and chocolate running down their arms over their faces and dripping off the work surfaces and down the table (Great Fun!!!!! Don’t ever buy one) Also Cooking oil and choc in my opinion does not taste nice. Leigh then took them down the indoor school to play football, while I cleaned up ( at approx 11pm). Now the indoor school in the summer is very dry and dusty, sticks well to chocolate as you can imagine, Feeling the need for a glass of wine my friend and I went to supervise. Only to see the ball hit one of the indoor ceiling lights and dislodge one of the chains hanging it up so that it was half falling off. These lights are very high up and not easy to get too. After a game of duck duck goose which I did participate and ran a few laps we managed to get them to bed. I did ask them to calm down and go to sleep at about 1am and then I shouted at 1.45am and it was a bit quieter after that, Although I think it was more like 3am before they all went to sleep.

Tuesday All up at 7.45am Horses in and then breakfast. (Some looked rather tired) and then show Jumping in the field. Everyone rode well and only Nancie bit the dust. Steve whilst out spotted one of those vans with a crane type lift on it, he managed to pull the driver over and offered him £20 to come and put light back up (brill!! job done) Lunch was followed by polocrosse, 3 teams played and team 1 were the winners managing to score 2 goals in 4 matches so well done Eleri, Carys, Jodie and Josh. After tea they went swimming, which means chocolate and dust is now in pool and kids are cleaner. I didn’t go swimming but I understand Leigh got a good drowning, game of football at 10pm although I managed to avoid that one. Sarah fell over leigh playing a strange sort of game which involved a lot of running and tackling and bent her wrist. Wrapped a wet tea towel round her arm (Glad I did that first aid course). Drinking choc and biscuits in the kitchen at midnight, bed by 1am and I didn’t hear a sound from them, so didnt have to shout at all.

Wednesday, Breakfast was a little late, glad this is only 3 days and not 5 kids are getting tired now, Cross country practice in arena (Alex and Eleri fell off) and in the field this morning, followed by lunch and gymkhana in the afternoon, which was most entertaining as it was done bareback and several fell off. Staff looking somewhat jaded by this time. We had a presentation at 4pm and the winners were, for showjumping (Jessica R) grooming (Hannah) plaiting (Sarah) tack cleaning (Hannah) gymkhana (Hannah) with Alex winning the paper cup award for the most entertaining kid on camp.

Posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 9:31 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.