Fairplay House
On Monday 12th November, Year 5 boarded the coach and started their journey towards Fairplay House, which is in Essex. An hour later, as we turned onto a narrow country road, we could see the large outline of Fairplay House looming in the distance, and our excitement grew.
Once we arrived at the house we were greeted by one of the instructors, Pete, who explained that we were responsible for most of the chores while there, such as setting up for meals and cleaning the dishes. We were then sent off to our bedrooms to unpack and make our beds all by ourselves! Once we finished we were split into our activity groups and sent off on our first activity adventure; two groups did High Ropes while the others did Archery and Caving. Sadly, it poured with rain so we got extremely wet.
After dinner on Monday evening, we were instructed to put on our warmest clothes as we would be going for a walk through the fields in the dark (luckily it had stopped raining). Pete explained the route, and drew us a map that we had to memorise to make sure our group didn’t get lost. We were then dropped off along a path, and had to make our way back to Fairplay House with only 2 torches between our whole group! Although this was difficult, and frightening for some of us, we all completed the challenge and used our exceptional team work skills to make sure everyone was safe.
We woke up at 7am on Tuesday morning, and our teachers said they were pleasantly surprised by how quickly and quietly we’d gone to sleep the night before. We split into our activity groups again, with different groups doing high ropes, caving, archery and woodland games. During the caving activity, two groups even went through the tunnels with no torches meaning it was pitch black! These different activities encouraged us to participate in sports we don’t always have the opportunity to do in London. Although we were pushed outside our comfort zone, we were able to face our fears; lots of people faced their fear of heights on the high ropes with the support of their classmates.
After our day of activities we returned to the house and had some delicious Bolognese for dinner. We were then instructed to start packing our things as we were unfortunately leaving the next day. Once we had packed, showered and were in our pyjamas, we gathered in the living room for a film and hot chocolate evening. We enjoyed snuggling down and watching Horrid Henry, to relax after a long and busy day.
On Wednesday morning we had to clean our bedrooms ready for the next school to arrive. After breakfast, we partook in our final activity of the trip before eating the lunch we had prepared during the morning. We then boarded the coach again, excited to return to London to see our parents and family, who we had missed very much.
