At 11 am this morning, the Young Carers arrived at the Carers Centre full of adrenaline and excitement for their 3 day break away from their caring role. With a mini bus provided by “Afford rent-a-car” we were ready to head off to PGL Boreatton in Shrewsbury.
At first we thought we wouldn’t even be able to leave the centre as the key would not fit into the ignition. Neither Di nor I could work it out for the life of us. The Young Carers thought this was hilarious. Anyway, after a rather embarrassing phone call to the rental company and a rather easy fix, we were on our way.
It took us about an hour to reach the PGL Park, we were met by Jonno our group lead who was absolutely fantastic, he was very welcoming and very approachable. We got settled into our cabin and then headed off to lunch.
After lunch it was straight to the first activity, rifle shooting. Our instructor, Luke took us to get the rifles and headed over to the range. Luke showed the Young Carers the correct way of shooting the rifle and placed targets at the other end of the range. Each Young Carer had a number of shots before we played a series of games that put the boys and girls against each other. The games included battleships which like the board game, the Young Carers drew ships on the back of the targets and then the other team had to shoot and sink the ships. The drawback was that you couldn’t see the ships. This ended in a draw between the boys and girls so another game was played. Luke had composed a table on the reverse of a target and placed letters in the shapes. The aim was to shoot as many letters with the pellets that each of the Young Carers had and then when all shots were fired, make a word from the letters that had been hit. This also ended in a tie.
After returning the rifles the Young Carers got harnessed up and headed over to the ‘giant swing’. They paired up and were attached to the giant swing which was hoisted up backwards by the other Young Carers on the ground pulling a rope to bring them higher with each pull. When they were ready the Young Carers that were attached pulled a cord which released them from the pulley and they swung back and forth.
Diner was next and afterwards the Young Carers were taken to the on-site shop. We purchased marshmallows as our evening activity was a campfire hosted by both Jonno and Luke who put on quite a show. Luke had brought a large Bluetooth speaker down for the Young Carers to play music through and Jonno and Luke began dancing to the music that was put on. We toasted marshmallows laughed and returned to our cabin for the first night.
We learned our first activity after breakfast tomorrow would be raft building. The face of the Young Carers dropped from the news that they could potentially be heading for a swim in the cold autumn weather. Let’s see what tomorrow brings. I’m sure they will love it.