Event report

Alton Towers Camp > October 2000

Friday 13th October 2000

Ten ventures and 2 leaders from the unit set off at about 5:30pm in a hired mini-bus for Little Eaton (just above Derby) where we were going to be camping for the weekend with about 500 other ventures and leaders from all over the UK. We arrived at about 9:30pm to be greeted by a unit which we had met on the Pontins trip.

We had no kit except our tents and hand luggage as the rest of our stuff was coming up in a van which had been delayed earlier in the evening. We put up our tents and headed straight for the bar and disco. There were lots of people milling around and hardly anyone in the disco until later when everyone had had a little more orange juice (?) to drink.

We made a new ruling that we all had to 'wiggle' whenever we passed through any doorway, arch or gate for the rest of the weekend. This was to atract much attention from strangers at Alton Towers the next day.

The rest of the night passed pretty uneventfully with us heading for bed at around 3am and trying to get a good night's sleep as we had to be up at the crack of dawn to go to Alton Towers.

Saturday 14th October

We got up at about 8am to catch the bus at 8:45am (which then stood in the same place until about 9:30am. We were finally bussed into Alton Towers itself and set off to find breakfast at about 10:30am as we couldn't be bothered to cook earlier.

After breakfast we all headed for Oblivion and most of us went on the AMAZING ride. For those of you who don't know: you are taken to about 50 metres above the ground and then dropped vertically for the 50 metres into a mist-covered hole in the ground where you carry on for another 20 metres and then pull 4.5 G whilst coming out of the drop - pretty awesome. We managed to all help Johnny to say his promise whilst on this ride so that he was invested in the strangest place in the history of the unit (so far).

We then proceeded to go on the HEX, Corkscrew, Sky ride, Congo River Rapids, Runaway Mine Train, Log Flume and Black Hole. We also had lunch at McDonalds and a quick beer at the pub before the log flume.

Some of the time it rained but most of the day it was dry with the sun even coming out once or twice. At 5:45pm we wiggled back onto the coach and headed back to the campsite.

It was still raining when we arrived back and we were hungry so set off for the Little Chef which was just down the road. Sam managed to knock a picture hanging on a pillar off by just walking past it so we made a fast exit leaving a couple of pence for a tip.

When we got back to the campsite the disco had started up again but there was no-one in it yet so we quickly changed into our fancy-dress costumes and wiggled into the disco. The fancy dress was great fun and there were Wombles, horses, cows, Santas and many policemen/women. The disco carried on until about 1am when we went back to our areas to go bed by about 2:30am.

Sunday 15th October (sorry, I got bored and wanted to watch the 11 o'clock show!)

Got up 9am. Wiggled. Breakfast 9:30am. Wiggled. Packed. Wiggled. Left 10:30. Got home 2pm. Slept. ZZZZzzzzz.....

Thanks go to Steve, Julie and Ian for driving the minibus and van all the way up and back. Without them we couldn't have had so much fun. Thanks.