Stubbers Adventure Camp

The transition from primary to secondary school can be a difficult one and therefore we endeavour to make the move as smooth as possible. In order to help the Old Grammmarians and First Formers settle into life at City of London School a one night residential trip is arranged for the second week of term - we go to Stubbers Adventure Centre.

The boys spend two days taking part in a variety of activities which focus on building teamwork skills and enabling them to get to know one another. The trip is also a good opportunity for the boys to get to know their new form tutor, outside of the classroom environment, as well as senior boys who have been attached to their form as affilited prefects.

A boy's eye view of Stubbers: 

For all OG and First Form boys the term started with a trip to Stubbers Adventure Centre. We set off early in the morning and everyone seemed excited about what lay ahead over the next two days. On arriving at the centre we were organised into groups for our first activity. My group started off doing raft building with barrels and planks, but I proceeded to fall off so many times that I was told to swim back to shore. (That activity was the one when my group generally got most wet!) After that, we went back to the main tent, and Miss Hornick told us which activities we would do next.  We were told that we would be climbing.

We trooped over to the storage house and collected our harnesses and helmets; we then were told how to put them on.  After that our group walked over to the climbing wall with our instructors, and began to do our climbing.  Most people reached a fairly good height, however some, including Miss Hudson, did not particularly enjoy the experience of being twenty feet up in the air!

Next was the high ropes course.  There were two heights of ropes.  I chose the top set and went first, very foolishly, I might add.  The ropes for me were generally terrifying, being twenty-five feet off the ground.  You started off fairly easily, walking along a fairly wide plank, but after three metres, that was where the fun ended.  With a two-foot gap to jump, the course suddenly had an element of fear attached.  You then had to walk along a variety of round, smooth or thin obstacles to get round the rest of the course.  I fell off once. However, it was actually very pleasant hanging there in thin air.  The feeling of getting my feet back on the floor was a very comfortable feeling.  Miss Hudson unsurprisingly did not really wish to go on the high ropes course.

That evening we enjoyed a great entertainment of acting out an advert, and the prefects had to do tin foil.  They dressed Timi up as a lady with tin foil earrings, tin foil clothing, and even equipped him with a tin foil handbag.  Then we did a quiz and we did fairly well on the putting faces to names sheet, but compared to some of the first forms, we didn’t do very well in the maths.  We then went off to bed but most of the tents had people awake beyond midnight.

We woke up crisp and fresh the next morning, although with aching backs, ready to start another day’s activities. This began with cereal and a big fry up consisting of sausages, bacon and scrambled eggs.  We then had about forty five minutes of free time in which I had a chat to my friends and raced around the field.

That day we did lots of activities.  We started with abseiling down the side of a building, then went on to do tunnelling underground, and prefect Timi ended up having to forward roll out of the tunnel at the end of the activity.  Alongside all that fun, though, we learnt an important lesson during one of our activities.  Co-operation is a key tactic during team challenges.  We started off having to get a hoop around an enclosed circle without breaking the link, then had to move some skies without anyone in our group falling off, and finally had to get a golden orb to float to the top of a tower by diverting, and pumping water into it.

The final activity that my group did at Stubbers though was truly the best – kayaking.  We started off learning the best way to get around the lake, and ended the session with a game of handball, except in kayaks.

Overall, the trip to Stubbers was amazing, and I hope that all classes who go there enjoy the experience as much as we have, but any feeling that I had at Stubbers could not beat lying down in bed nice and early that night after eating a lovely meal.

Joshua Kenway (OG)