An Abbotsholme adventure race team drawn from Year 9 and 10 pupils secured first place in the recent Round Square Schools Adventure Race which sees pupils from schools across the UK compete.
This event, in its 9th year, hosted this year by Gordonstoun School in Scotland, had teams from Wellington School, Windermere, Westfield and Gordonstoun competing, and our team – called including Charlotte Amos, from Ashbourne, James Goodbrand, from Stafford, and Henry Sanderson from Rocester, all aged 15; and 14 year olds Isobel Brown from Ashbourne, Alex Hesp-Gollins from Stone, and Adam Wright from Lutterworth, (the Dark Knights!) who made up the six-person team overcame stiff competition to lift the trophy.
The close fought competition, held over a weekend in May, involves a series of demanding outdoor events: a canoe race; climbing; a forest run; mountain biking and problem solving; night orienteering; and a fell race, the climax event. Teams are also judged on their safety, teamwork, camp craft skills and camp cooking.
The teams travelled up to Scotland on the Friday night, met the other teams taking part and prepared for the weekend’s challenges. They were up at 6.30am to begin preparations and didn’t see their beds until 11.30pm that night, after being on the go for most of that time.
Abbotsholme is very proud of its outdoor programme, which prepares pupils to take on challenge such as this, but is particularly proud of the achievements of these pupils, who gave up time to undertake a specific training programme and put a whole-hearted effort into this and to the event itself. Having wrenched the trophy away from Gordonstoun, the challenge will now be to retain it in next year’s event, which will be in the Lake District. Pupils in next year’s Year 9 and 10 will be invited to put themselves forward to train and be selected for the honour of following in the footsteps of this year’s highly successful adventure racers.