Year 6 PGL Trip

Year 6 PGL Trip

The school organises a PGL trip for our Year Six children. This year they will be going to the centre at Windmill Hill, near Herstmonceux. Previous trips have been to the centre at the Pestalozzi Village in Sedlescombe and to the Isle of Wight. This is a report about the trip to Sedlescombe by three of our children.

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On our Year 6 trip we went to a PGL centre, there were all sorts of activities and challenges to do, all of which were very safe. We arrived on Friday afternoon, and were shown around the centre, then we played some games. After we had our supper and unpacked we did our first challenge, which was a scavenger hunt. We were sorted into the groups that we were going to stay in for all our activities, then we had to answer different questions, find things and do challenges set by the leaders.

The abseiling tower

Some of the activities were scarier than others.
Abseiling was one of the scary activities. Some people didn’t want to do abseiling and were not pushed to do so. Abseiling is when there is a wall and you’re meant to jump down on a rope. It is scary to start with, but once you’re half-way down, you just want to jump. You are always safe because of the safety rope attached to you.

The Climbing Wall is a wall with little rocks stuck to it. You still have to wear a harness and a safety rope. You have to climb up the wall, then, when you’ve got up to the top, you let go of the rocks and they lower you down carefully.

Climbing Wall

The "Jacob’s Ladder" is a 40 foot ladder that has big gaps getting bigger as you near the top. If anyone didn’t want to go any higher, again they didn’t have to. You don’t even have to climb down! All you do is let go of the ladder and they will gently lower you down on your safety rope.

Jacob's Ladder

Fencing

Fencing is the same as sword fighting, but different swords. You wear a mask to protect your face and a long sleeve, thick, "back to front" jacket.

Hanging at the end of the Zip Wire

There was another challenge called the Zip Wire. The Zip Wire was FANTASTIC! You still have a safety rope on and a safety harness as a sort of seat. First, you climb a set of stairs to a tower then you can see a wire attached to 2 poles. Suddenly, when you’re all strapped in, a man pushes you off it. You’re attached to the wire so you zoom along the wire.

The Trapeze was a bar swinging on ropes which you sometimes see in circuses and a pole like a telegraph pole with a small platform on top. You have to climb up the pole using a ladder and then steps that you see on telegraph poles. When you get to the top, you jump off the pole towards the trapeze bar. Because you are on a safety rope, if you don’t get the bar, you just fall about a foot and then get lowered down.

About to make the leap onto the Trapeze

We also had activities in the evenings, Wacky Races was an evening activity, it was a load of all sorts of races. There was a plain running race, a balloon race and another race with a cup of water, you had to run with the cup in your mouth and try not to spill any, the winning team was the one with most water left in their cup, and a lot more different races!
Pestalozzi was a 4 day trip, so we had to sleep somewhere. The rooms were for a maximum of 6 people in each room. Most of the rooms had bunk beds in them. We were not allowed to eat or drink in the rooms, and boys were not allowed in the girls rooms and girls were not allowed in the boys rooms.
There was a lounge to eat our sweets but we had to share the lounge with another school.
We had a disco on Sunday night. It was totally AWESOME!
We did more activities on Monday morning and then went home after lunch, it was a brilliant weekend.

by Katherine, Caitlin and Ethan