The weekend of the 19th to the 21st saw us do what is becoming our annual residential to High Borrans with The Club 1 Lads.
this residential is a partnership piece of work between ourselves (pdyp) and North Tyneside Councils Active North Tyneside. the residential took young men form the Club1 scheme who are recipients of gym passes and allows us to spent a weekend with them in the countryside as a chance to explore how they are feeling and what support they would need. The Sub theme for the most current residential was "step up to employment".
While there, we use older young people (i promise that sentence makes sense) as peer mentors for the young lads. They can share skills, experiences and also bond with each other. You really cant beat a residential for getting to know someone. so below is an account of the thrills and spills of the residential.
We met the group for the residential at 5pm with a goal to be down to High Borrans by 8pm. after an initial hiccup with a traffic jam that set us back 30 minutes, we hoped it might have been smooth sailing for the rest of the drive... we were slightly wrong. After a brief encounter with a snow storm ,where we had to consider if it was this bad near newcastle, what would happen at the lakes. But after a short while it cleared and we had smooth driving until the dreaded junction 39. Due to taking a apparently quicker route we had the excitement of driving the hills near the lakes with a bit of snow on the ground... some would say that there was about 6 inches of snow... others would say it was more like a centimetre. But as we are entrepid adventurers, we carried on, eventually making it to the centre about 9pm.
First thing on the agenda was food, as everyone was starving. we filled our bellies with good quality home cooking (it was nice not having to do the dishes) before we started with our interviews looking at what each individual hoped to achieve. After this it was time for bed as we had a long day ahead of us the next day.
We were up at 8am saturday for a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, cereal and plenty of coffee. Bellies full, we kitted each of the lads out with there own pdyp/c;ub 1 branded coat and fleece before setting the work rota out, since this weekend was about work experience. The group of 10 divided up into four groups. Divided into groups they were set bout to doing jobs, these included building new benches, painting and renovating older seats. Building and supporting a preexisting fence to make it safe and then chopping fire wood to burn on the log fire. After a quick pit stop of hot soup and garlic bread we spent another hour finishing off the jobs before we went out on the Lake in the open top canoes. The weather was amazing for the canoeing and while cold, the sun was shining.
After this, it was time for tea, it was another delicious and filling meal. After a bit of a chill it was time for Mikes Maverick Chat show. This involved Mike interviewing different young people and also staff about their journey from school to where they are now, looking at positives and negatives and what they have experienced. The group found this enlightening and useful, hearing about the different stories. after this we left the lads sleeping on the couches and watching movies (kids these days have no stamina) while some of us played some table football and ping pong.
Sunday was another 8am breakfast, this time featuring bacon. before being kitted up ready for a full day crawling through caves. The caving experiences was one to remember as we went up to 60ft underground. we had to navigate crawl spaces, water ways and tight squeezes, with the smaller lads even managing to complete a challenge called the "cheese press", sadly there was no actual cheese, just a very tight crawl. After about 3 to 4hours in the caves it was time to head back to the centre for a nice hot shower. After we got back to the centre and got sorted it was time for the catch up interviews, this took about an hour spending time with the lads to assess how they found the weekend.
Once this was completed we had a final meal featuring Sticky toffee pudding before packing the bus ready for the return journey. This drive was a lot less eventful with the only major issue being the smell coming from the range of methane gas the lads were releasing in the back. We finally got back to the pdyp for about 9pm with everyone happy about how the weekend went and everyone knackered.
We would like to say a massive thank you to Sam and his team for making the stay so amazing
