Posted by admin on Friday 17 April 2009 under 2009 | 
On the 8 April Cadet Bev Goodchild left Ipswich on a coach heading to Luton airport for a week long Easter Camp in Gibraltar. The Camp is the first in the Central & East Regions overseas camps for this year and what follows below is her day by day account:
Wednesday 8 April 2009
Rooms are shared between six and although they’re better than tents its not by much. Could be worse = ) iPod is in the dock and everyone seems happy enough with the killers. Junk food stock is severely depleted but we’re not allowed in the naafi because it serves alcohol which the entire camp is prohibited from.
The rock is HUGE! There’s a fort with what looks like a radar mast thing and at the other end is a round fort. Seagulls are constantly circling the top but no signs of the monkeys so far. Everyone here seems to be Sgt. or above, it takes the piss. We’ve been warned about the tap water, thankfully there’s a drinking tap in the girls bathroom. The electricity plugs look a bit dodgy but seem to work fine.
One of the girls, Tia, wore new jeans on the way here and the blue dye has transferred to her legs, rather funny except she has exma or however you spell it and has to use baby wipes to get the blue off, hopefully they’ll be OK in the morning.
The flight here wasn’t too bad, no tears anyway *phew*. We all had our seats on our boarding passes and luckily I got an isle seat. One girl, Hatty, was sick just before check in and still looks a bit green, not so nice for her. I lost my passport!! Between the escalators and the gate at the other end. We had security check everywhere including the table where it was last seen. It finally turned up in Hatty’s bag, by then the eyes were definitely about to spill over.
FS Fincham arrived 10 minutes after we did at Luton after being at RAF Cranwell doing aptitude tests which she passed enough to be a fighter pilot if she wants.
Did a bit of revision on the way to the airport but it was pretty boring so didn’t last long. The entire journey took aaages, especially the flight.
Having fun woking out what time to set the alarm on my phone because I refuse to change it from UK time haha.
Time to change into PJ’s.
Thursday 9 April 2009
Today was a 6am start to leave plenty of time for a shower before breakfast at 7.30am but there was still a queue, only 4 of the 8 worked :S. Fry up was tasty but didn’t stay long, never mind. We were picked up at 9 from outside the block by some rather funky mini buses, sort of a 60′s retro thing going on. We went through the town to the runway to have the camp photo taken in the middle of it, fortunately it wasn’t in #1′s, yay. It was incredibly windy so everyone’s hair will look messy in the photo, if we hadn’t have had to have our berets off because of FOD dangers they would all have blown off anyway.
After that it was back to the Devil’s Tower Camp (DTC) where we’re staying for a tour around the bomb disposal unit, AWES (never managed to find out what it stands for). There were two men in the unit, a sgt and a cpl, the sgt would decide the best course of action which would most likely involve a robot (capable of disarming pretty much anything), controlled by the cpl from an armoured van that weighted 4 tonnes! There was loads of equipment laid out for us to look at and try out, the most entertaining of which was a protective suit weighing in at about 150 lbs not including the helmet, it included 3 fans to keep the wearer cool that took 16 double A batteries each, it had 4 articulated kevlar plates for improved movement and protection just in case a bomb went off, highly unlikely in Gibraltar which has only called the bomb disposal unit out once in almost 15 years.
We went back to the rooms to change into civvies and went bowling in the local leisure centre, it had the coolest bowling alley I have ever seen 
there was a cinema and small ice rink upstairs too. Pleased to say that A flight had the highest score of the afternoon.
The evening was spent with the Gibraltarian Air Cadets doing an initiative exercise, we were split into groups of 6 or 7 and told to make a bridge with newspaper, stickers and sheets of A4 that was strong enough to hold a can of ‘pop’ and increasing numbers of Jenga blocks. None of the groups managed to do it successfully but the group I was in won because we used triangles and it looked the best
It was free time from 9pm to sort out kit for tomorrow and lights out at 10.30pm.
Friday 10 April 2009
We had an hour for breakfast at 7.30 as usual followed by drill, it quickly became apparent that different wings had different ways of doing drill, slightly different commands were causing major confusion within the ranks. Half an hour was definately enough.
Slowly getting to know the girls in my room, everyone is always a bit shy for the first few days and this camp is no exception.
Today we went into St. Michael’s Cave in the Upper Rock Nature Reserve, it was converted into a theatre by the Victorians with seats and a stage made of concrete inside and the rocks were lit up from behind, it was beautiful (and cold). There was a small exhibition about neolithic man living in the caves because a bowl and a skull were found in it 1867. At the time nobody realised the significance of the find so it went undocumented for several decades. There was a stalactite cut in half and in the cross section you could see bands similar to those in a tree trunk and from them it’s possible to tell how much rain fell while the rock was forming.
We went to one end of the rock to see O’Hara’s Gun Battery accompanied by one of the members of the local Air Cadets who also manned the gun during the war, unfortunately the lights weren’t working in the engine room used to power the mechanisms to aim the gun so we had to use torches. The gun could hit a piece of string 18 miles away and weighed several tonnes.
The afternoon was spent aboard HMS Argyle who had docked into Gibraltar because of a problem with the sonar equipment, we were very lucky to get a tour from one of the crew members as he was roped into it at the last minute. Fortunately he didn’t seem too annoyed at the constant barrage questions and we saw most of the ship including the bridge, captains cabins (we didn’t realise he was in there at the time :S) on board helicopter, opps room, sick bay, kitchens, sleeping bit and crew rooms where they were watching The Ringer. There was even a bar fully stocked with all the usuals which the staff were eyeing up.
After dinner it was inter flight sports, A vs. B, again A flight won everything, there was uni-hock, football and rounders, all very fun in the sun
Saturday 10 April 2009
We’ve been out for the whole day and I’m knackered! It was hot in the sun but the sea breeze blowing from the med 
kept us cool.
Lower St. Michael’s Cave was awesome! There were 5 chambers to the cave and the objective was to get into the fifth where there was a huge underground lake. There were lots of gaps and crevasses that had to be negotiated on the way so unfortunately we only got to the fourth but it was still worth seeing the smaller pool in it. On the way there were rocks that with a little imagination looked like things, Churchill’s face with a cigar and an ask tray, a monkey, a baby’s hand, Frankenstein’s monster and loads of others. The guide was really good, telling us where to place feet and how far to reach etc. and we were always looking out for over hanging rocks to avoid, apparently a guy last year cracked his skill in two places even with the helmet on. Ouch.
When we went to see O’Hara’s Gun Battery we could see stone steps going up the mountainside, today we climbed them. There were monkeys on the way up and weren’t as friendly as the ones we saw yesterday. At first it seemed impossible but it didn’t take too long and there was a café at the top that sold ice creams, this has definitely been the best day so far. Everyone was split into 4 groups and my group got back 2 or 3 hours before the other 3, plenty of time for a shower = ) before the cinema that evening.
We saw The Boat The Rocked and those who managed to stay awake thought it was really good. The cinema was at the bowling place but only served salted pop corn but the film made up for it.
Sunday 11 April 2009
The 2 and a half hours on the coach to Seville was worth it, we went to Isla Magica, a theme park in España and it was fantastic. Being Easter Sunday it wasn’t busy at all, bonus, and there were hardly any queues. The MacDonald’s signs said it was 28° so the water rides were popular, the best ride had to be the tea cups, seriously, it was impossible to walk in a straight line for about 5 minutes after you came off. The mega drop thing was pretty good too. There was a big group of Spanish people all in tee’s they had drawn on with fabric paints and they were mad! My camera ran out of battery on the way there but someone took a photo of me and a friend with them, they kept trying to lift us up haha. There was a woman selling sweets and I had a proper conversation with her in spanish! A big deal considering I’m completely crap at it.
We’ve been offered customised polo shirts by one of the staff, sounds like a nice idea and everyone wanted to do it so they should arrive on tuesday.
Monday 12 April 2009
Today was really good, we had an early start so we would have longer in Ronda as it took a few hours to get there in the retro buses. It’s in the middle of nowhere and you just stumble upon it. We had a tour around the bull ring, it’s supposed to be the biggest and most important in the whole of Spain, lucky us :p. The tour guide was an awesome little old lady who knew just about everything about the place (kinda what you’d expect) and was really pleased at the end because we’d been asking so many questions. We had a bit of time at the end to look around Ronda, it’s famous for the gorge that runs through it and the bridge separates the old and new sides. The shopping wasn’t fantastic although it was good for souvenirs but there was a McDonald’s near the bull ring that made up for it and hid us from the rain for a while.
We left scenic Ronda and went to Puerto Banus. It was full of million dollar yachts one of which was just coming into a space way too small for it and the staff on both sides were trying to fend it off, very entertaining. There were super cars everywhere and the guards on the Cartier doors didn’t look like they wanted to have their picture taken with us. We found a tiny bakery down a side street and they did the best cakes ever plus it was the only shop we could go into and actually buy something haha.
It’s been a long day, definitely time for lights out.
Tuesday 13 April 2009
Beach day!! We’ve been looking at it over the wall near our block for the past week and this afternoon we finally made it down there. The water was freezing cold! Up to the knees was certainly far enough. There was an ice cream shop on the promenade and we were literally queuing out the door for ages just to get one, dangerous when the idiots were racing up and down in their crap cars were speeding to try and look cool. The guys kept bundling people into the sea, it made no difference if they were fully clothed so volley ball seemed the safest option. We played for ages until the locals next to us got fed up with who ever went to get the ball that invariably went their way flicking sand over them.
We went to the siege tunnels in the morning and saw all the cannons and the guide was the same man who took us around O’Hara’s Gun Battery. I felt a bit sorry for the genuine tourists because we were completely blocking the tunnels, they were only about 6ft wide and there was 40 of us.
I don’t want to leave Gib now, the heat is fantastic and I’ll miss the people 
Most aren’t in N&S so we most likely won’t see each other again except perhaps on another overseas camp or sports thing and with my sporting abilities that’s not very likely lol.
We packed this evening ready for tomorrow, not sure how much sleep we’ll get tonight if any :p
Wednesday 14 April 2009
We’ve been shopping today, very successfully, getting it packed was the best initiative exercise ever. Last night was rather late and we’re all suffering for it, oops. The airport in Gib is tiny, there’s a café and a duty free the size of the NCO’s room and that’s about it and the security was a joke too. The girls were getting nervous just before their bags were weighed but none went over the limit, some were pretty close though. There were birds in the café just flying in and out, it was a bit weird but nobody else seemed to mind.
We were driven out to the plane in a bus but obviously there weren’t enough seats and the old couple sitting down kept giving everyone dirty looks as we swung about round the corners. We couldn’t exactly help it considering the driver was seemingly on crack. The flight seemed to take ages, possibly because we had to do 7pm twice as we got into the British time zone. It’s amazing how many things you can do I Spy with on a plane when you put your mind to it lol. Luton looks a bit spooky when there’s nobody about and all the shops are closed.
There were several tearful good-byes when it came to the end of the trip and promises to keep in touch which will hopefully all be kept. If anyone ever gets the chance to go on an overseas camp seriously go! If it’s half as fantastic as this one has been it will be well worth it =)
Posted by admin on Saturday 11 April 2009 under 2009 |
Saturday 11 April 2009 saw the years first New Recruit Training Day. The day was attended by 9 new cadets that had joined us since the beginning of the year and was run by Cpl Grant Carroll and Cdt Jonathan Adams.
The day was spilt in to different aspects of the New Recruits core training that they have been receiving since joining and was geared to be the final chapter before being put forward for the First Class Cadet classification. The day comprised of uniform care, which meant learning how to iron a shirt and trousers to polishing shoes as well as learning rank structure and knowing who to salute and when.
The sunshine in the afternoon gave the cadets the chance to wear their freshly ironed shirts and trousers and to show off their highly polished shoes as they were put through there paces at drill, which any cadet in the Corps will tell you is an important part of the syllabus.
With a Q&A session at the end of the day, giving the New Recruits the opportunity to ask their teachers for any help and guidance, the day came to a close with the New Recruits geared up to ensure that they will be well on their way to being another set of fine Cadets for 188 (Ipswich) Squadron.
