Recount by Annabel
On Thursday 23rd May 2019, l came to school with butterflies in my tummy as I was going on my very first school residential to Rippledown. After assembly we left, Mr Waitt drove our minibus to St Margaret’s Bay 45 minutes away. When we were halfway there we sang along to a Million Dreams.
There we met a friendly man from Rippledown called Spencer who stayed with us all the time (except sleep time), he told us to put our wellies on. Then we went rock pooling. I enjoyed squeezing red anemones. We found lots of shore crabs and the boys found a dead husk. Rufus and I found a massive water crab. Then Clementine found a tadpole and they put it into a white bucket where the red anemones were. We also found snails.Then we had lunch and did rock art, my group did a whale.
Then we walked up the steps to the top of the cliff and walked the 6 miles to Rippledown stopping on occasions to have a drink or reapply sunscreen. Then we walked over 6 hills to get there. On the way, we saw a magnificent building called St Margarets, it was on top of the cliff. When we were there we saw an old building and we knew it was Rippledown. It was then we realised that we had walked for two and a half hours!
We had been told that the girls room was called Drey and the boys was called Sett. When we got in the room we made our beds. After we had unpacked we went into the playroom to relax then we went to have a biscuit and a drink. Then we started to explore, we really enjoyed trapdoor. At dinner you had a choice of roast pork, roast chicken and a nut roast. I had roast pork. We were also in charge of laying our places and clearing them up.
Then we played in Trapdoor, which was a tunnel, and set out mammal traps to check in the morning. Then we had a sing song round a campfire and toasted pink and white marshmallows. After that we went to the Trapdoor and then went to our rooms for a twenty minute chat before bed. We went to bed at 9:15 pm and then we slept.
I woke up at 5:00 in the morning and had another chat then had breakfast then we checked our traps. Evie and I caught a house mouse, we called it Hazel. Then we had to make pizza which we ate it for lunch. We did pond dipping and I caught two sticklebacks. I worked with Emily and George. The we said goodbye to Spencer and Mr Waitt drove us back to Lorenden.
We had a wonderful time at Rippledown and my favourite thing was the mammal trapping because it was so interesting.
I wonder where we’ll go next year!