Haii again!
As I go through my blog posts, you'll see I talk more and more about my time in The Air Training Corps (pronounced Core, not Corpse)
I love Cadets, and hope to join The RAF when I am older.
Thats the Royal Air Force for those who do not know.
I am very cadet based, I do multiple activities including Shooting, Flying, Swimming, Camps, and basically learning survival skills, and about the history of the RAF etc.
NACATC Llanbedr
On the 9th of June 2012 I went to a camp called NACATC Llanbedr, in Wales.
NACATC stands for National Air Cadet Adventure Training Centre btw. And I had an absolutely AMAZING time! It was EPIC!
We did sooo many activities, such as Kayaking, Canoeing, Swimming, Team building exercises, Abseiling, Indoor and outdoor rock climbing, Archery, Jacob's ladder, Mountain Biking, Mountain trekking, Navigational skills, Hill walking, Day walks and on the last day we went into the town Barrmouth for a 'Cultural visit' (Basically an all day shopping trip).
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| Das me! doing archery! With my friend Welsh |
We had this little game we played; We were near this town called Porthmadog, and any time we saw a sign saying Porthmadog, we all had to shout it, and the first one to see it has to say to win a point. It was strange, but SOOOO! It kept us entertained.
At the end of the trip we had 'the paper plate awards'. I got the award called 'The Dancing Queen' cause everyone was trying to make me dance, because I HATE dancing. In the end they took a video of me doing Simon Says, and used the Just Dance app to make it look like I was dancing -.-
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| WE all got our faces painted as tigers. Im in the purple adidas hat behing the guy in the grey jacket :) |
On the way home, it was a 7-hour coach ride, back to England!
I had so much fun!
And I'll never forget this trip!
Lesson of the camp:Dance when your told to, or youll be technically altered.
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| Im in the back row, third along from the left |
RAF Spadeadam
Because I am smart, I decided it would be a good idea to get my nose pierced the week before i went away.
I'm not very smart.
On the 4th August 2012 I went to a camp at RAF base Spadeadam.
Its what you call a Blues camp. This is where we do mostly visits to museums, and lots of marching and what you call Drill. Then we have a drill competition where two groups of cadets (called a flight and b flight) compete against eachother to see who is the best at drill. I was in B Flight. A flight won.
The things we did at Spadeadam included: shooting, swimming, visit to aircraft museum, visit to roman history museum, day walk, walk along hadrians wall, night expeditions, drill competitions, hiking, movie nights and lessons about the base and its history.
When we went shooting, I was sooo nervous, cause I'd never been shooting before, and had only recently passed my weapons handling test.
We got on the range, and all was going well until my turn came.
I did everything right, and when it came to shooting I was about to fire, when the person lying next to me, on the range, fired his rifle.
I nearly shat myself.
I was shaking and everything. It took me 4 hours to finally shoot that goddamn rifle, but I did it! And I actually got a better score than half the more experienced cadet shooters!
When we went swimming, we did our swimming badges. I managed to get intermediate swimming badge. Somehow.
After that, we decided to play water polo. I am crap at it, so i just pottered about on the sides of the pool. But... My nose stud came out.. in the pool. After half an hour of searching, we gave up.. And as the Cadet Warrant Officer was about to get outta the pool, she stood on it! So I finally got my nose stud back, and back in my nose. Woohoooo!
On the night expedition, it was organised by the RAF police on the base. Its called fieldcraft, where basically you learn how to move about if you were in Afghanistan. This teaches you how to attack enemies, and also improves your nevigational skills. The base has like shit loads of land, and forest and feilds and stuff. So we had PLENTY of space. We were given a map of the base, and we were given radios. Then we got missions off the police like 'Retrive photo capsule containing evidence of enemy activity from a certain place' and we had to find that place on the map and get there. BUT, the police were dressed as the enemy, as the taliban and they were trying to kill us to stop us completing our mission. Obviously we werent allowed real guns and rifles, so we had to make guns with our fingers and shout 'bang bang bang!' we felt silly but it was LOADS of fun! We were walking around, but obviously they couldn't let cadets wander round a base on their own, so we had a Flight Lieutenant (Flt LT) with us to keep us safe. At one point we had to walk up a really swampy hill, with loads of holes in it that were waist deep, and the Flt Lt tried to step over one and he fell into the one right next to this hole, and he couldnt get up so we were trying to lift him out of this hole and he fell straight into another one and he was screaming his head off cause it was cold, (he was about 56-57 years old) and like 5 holes later, we finally got off the hill. The Flt Lt was SOAKING wet! I don't think i've ever laughed so much in my life! When it got dark, we were given glow sticks to see what we were doing. I hurt my foot so i had to be taken away as a casualty at about 11:45pm, and we went to the point where the end of the mission was, and we were waiting for the rest of the cadets to catch up.
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| me and one of the planes at the aircraft museum |
I cant even begin to explain how funny it is to be sat in absolute pitch black, in the middle of nowhere, waiting for a group of cadets. When all of a sudden you see these little blue and pink and orange etc coloured lines moving along the paths in the distance (glow sticks) and then you know the cadets are gonna get ambushed by the 'taliban'. So your sitting in silence, and then all you hear is about 30 people screaming 'BANG BANG BANG' and loads of screaming. It is sooooo funny! By the time we all got back, we were knackered!
On the last night, well there had only been three girls on the camp; myself, my friend a sgt, and my other friend, a cadet warrant officer.
Well in the girls dorm there were 9 beds between 3 girls, so we decided to build a fort and sleep in it. It was AWESOME! We put matresses down and everything and slept in it on the night.
The next morning we had to get up at 6:30AM for the drill competition. Well whilst I was still asleep in the fort, and the cadet warrant officer was already awake and in the shower, the sargeant decided to try and take down the fort by herself.
The result?
She dropped a mattress on my face. Waking me up, and knocking my nose stud out. For the second time on camp.
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| Our fort. Das me flopped down in the middle! |
On the way home, it was only an hour coach ride.
I literally got home, got changed, packed a bag, and went down to Manchester for my Aunties surprise birthday party, and we stayed down there for the night. We stayed at the premier inn.
So those are the only camps i've been to so far, but there will be more!
C'ya!
-Kenny♬
