On Tuesday the 27th of August our TY group travelled on a bus to the south of Wexford to Sheilbaggan Outdoor Education and Training Centre. We got the bus at 8am from our school and began the hour-long journey to Sheilbaggan. When we arrived, we were introduced to our instructors and were sat down inside the main building where we were then split up into groups according to our birth months from January to June then July to December. Then we were brought outside to play a team building game where we were split up again and tasked with crossing the small yard using circular pads as steppingstones to get over the “lava” and picking them up behind us and the goal of the game was to get across without leaving anyone behind (It was harder than it sounds). After the team building game the January to June group were brought over to be sized for wetsuits as it was our turn to go coasteering. We got changed and were put on anther bus to where we would begin our coasteering adventure. We were taught how to jump into the water safely without hitting our faces off rocks. We were brought to one of the small cliffs to jump off, and we were shown how to jump into the water. One after another we got to go and even some of our teachers joined in. As we were running out of time, we asked the instructors if we could do the biggest cliff jump they had and then they brought us to “Big Bertha”. Again, like a group of lemmings we jumped off the 24-foot jump. After that we came back to the busses and got changed out of our wet suits and went back to the main area. The July to December group were already piling onto their bus ready to go. We went back into the main building and had lunch, after that the instructors came in and we began doing more bonding games which consisted of making a fish out of another shape, moving a ball through pipes and other fun team building games. We were then taken outside and were strapped into harnesses to do a rock-climbing wall, the instructors thought they would help the people who were struggling with the fear of heights by putting sa blindfold on them and sending them up with someone at the bottom telling them where to go and it surprisingly worked. Then we were taken to our final activity of the day which was a manmade cave system indoors. We had to crawl through tunnels and go into ball pits and try our best to get around. When we got out, we were told that there was a smaller and harder tunnel to get through and only the brave (or stupid) ones went through. At the end we thanked our instructors who had shown us an amazing fun filled day and we got on the bus and headed back to school.


Category: Transition Year