On the 19^th of September twenty-four girls in Years 11 and 12, Mrs Vallance and Mrs Ronchetti left Kingsley to begin the first stage of our World Challenge journey … by going to Buxton! Although Buxton is not as exotic as Sri Lanka, our final destination, it was really important, because we sorted out our teams and started the all important process of bonding.

When we arrived at the World Challenge Centre in Buxton the first thing we had to do was sort out the different roles we were to play in the team. Although everyone wanted to do the shopping and no one wanted to be a washer-upper everyone got a job they were happy with.

The next step was to sort out the equipment. Along with all of our essentials we had to carry 4 tents, three days worth of food and lots of other supplies between the twelve people in our group. Imagine our horror when we were told that we had to walk to our camp site with what felt like 10 ton rucksacks. But it was OK, as the campsite was only two minutes down the road!  
Once we had set up our tents, cooked dinner and generally sorted ourselves out, we all met up and our leader began to brief us on our expedition, scaring us with tales of getting malaria, rabies and diarrhoea. When we went to bed that night we were all convinced that we would die out in Sri Lanka!

After a cold night we left early in the morning to begin our trekking. But as we had left the tents behind and eaten most of the food we were happy. By 3pm, we had reached our next campsite and were ready to collapse with exhaustion, and we were all looking forward to a good rest. But to our initial dismay we were set to do some community service, weeding the playground and tidying the path in our campsite.  For one hour we all worked hard, which gave us an appetite for our dinner of spaghetti and chilli. Again, once we had eaten and cleaned up, we had another meeting about our expedition. This time when we left the meeting, we felt fired up about going to Sri Lanka.

After another cold night we woke up early to walk back to the World Challenge Centre. After cleaning everything that we had been given we were ready to return home. But this time on the bus we were a different team. We all knew each other better and could really call ourselves a team.

Click here for more pictures: http://www.kingsleygallery.co.uk/index_files/worldchallenge08.htm