High Ashurst

High Ashurst 

As Part of our CAS program we visited High Ashurt camp to learn team skills, as well as physical and outdoor skills, such as fire making and climbing. We all were instructed to set ourselfs goals for the trip and to try and fullfill these and I think I did so.

Goals and Objectives 

My goal was to do every single activity that we were set to do, to learn new team skills and to learn how to make a fire without any matches or a firelighter. The fire making was most probably the hardest of all as we only had damp wood available and were only given a flint to start the fire.
I personally think that I fulfilled my first objective, to learn new team skills as the first activity which we did when we arrived at the camp was team building. We had to go through multiple obstacles for which we had to be a team to get through. For example we had to all get through a set of crossed fixed ropes, this involved the whole team communicating with each individual going through the rope maze and making sure he/she did not touch the ropes. Whilst this activity I learnt to communicate appropriately in a team.
My second goal I also obtained by participating in all activities which we did, this included all the climbing activities.
My third goal was more tricky than I thought due to the reasons already listed above. However after about half an hour of trying me and my partner managed to get a decent fire going using only damp wood, cotton wool and a flint.

Learning Outcomes 

I think that I have achieved learning outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 8.
I have increased the awareness of my abilities, so I have identified my strengths, for example physical skills, however I was weak in fire making.
I have undertaken a lot of new challenges, which I have not done before.
As a group we planned and initiated this this activity, as well as working together with everyone as a team.
In the process I learned new skills, like my fire making and team work.

This is me and my partner making the fire

Reflection

I set out on this trip with fairly reasonable expectations and ambitions, learn new team skills, fire making and participating in all the activities. I did not think much of any of them, however some proved harder than I thought they would have been. We first undertook a team building exercise that I thought took a lot more outside the box thinking and team work than I had expected. We needed to use all of the peoples ideas and try them all out to achieve the objectives given to us by the martials. I really got to know the people quite a bit and I thought it was a great team building activity, because it was not easy, one really had to team up to achieve something, no one wanted to be the team that did not manage the task. After several times being told of for swearing after fustrating attempts to achieve the objectives we finished the team building course and I can whole heartedly say that I learn new team leading skills, however I felt more happy about getting to know the people in my team and facing difficult challenges with them. After this we set out to the firemaking part of the trip. This is the activity, that I feel like took the most skill and ability to do, however it needed persistance and patience to fulfill. Me and my partner partnered up with the ambitions of collecting suitable firewood in a very wet conditions. We went out and collected what we thought was suitable, however we noticed that it was going to be difficult as anything to light this fire with all this damp wood. This did not keep us off trying though, so we started with a few cotton wool balls and a flint. we started striking the flint, developing our method to get the most out of the sparks and at first we really were not really successful, however being patient we got better and better. Then the cotton balls caught flame, so we hurried to get our fire wood to build the fire, however we started to stack way too much wood on the fire and our flames from our tinder were lost. We were devastated that our first successful flame was lost, however we set out to start this tense firemaking journey again. We collected more cotton wool balls and set them on our platform, we then took turns of striking the flint due to its exhausting effect on us. We striked and striked and striked, however it seemed like we would never get another flame and that our hope was lost. Then in a strike of luck we got another flame, this time we were going to be patient in the laying of the wood to let it dry out a little first and build the fire. So we patiently layed the pieces of wood on each other, one after the other, cautiously building the fire, using every sense of ours to not kill it in a rash move. We saw this fire grow from nothing and it started becoming quite the beast and we soon were advised to put out our fire that we had nurtured from nothing to this now, it felt a little like a waist, however we had learnt a new skill, a skill that will not be lost easily. All in all I feel like this activity brought me closer to nature, learning skills to live in nature, team and leadership skills, sleeping in a tent as our forefathers did and facing adversity together. I am most happy about the friendships I built over the whole trip and the relations to nature, it is something I have cherished since with other activities I have completed and it made me cherish the smaller things in life and appreciate those.