Argyll Forest Trip

This weekend was the IFSA-Butler Argyll Forest trip, I just got back around noon today. We left on Friday, drove west past Glasgow and then our buses (coach buses) got onto a ferry to go across a Loch! They didn't tell us this ahead of time and we were all really excited and confused, we pulled up to the ferry and weren't sure if we personally were getting on the ferry or if the whole bus was. The whole bus did! And lots of other cars. It was cool. Then we drove through the mountains (although it was dark, we couldn't see much) along windy, small roads. I'm surprised the big coach buses made it. We got to our hostel, which was built in the 1800s by a wealthy family for a summer home. It looks sort of like a castle, I'll post pictures at the end of the post. We got assigned rooms, which were just basic hostel rooms with bunk beds. The bathroom was downstairs, and reminded me of shower houses you use when you go camping, with lots of toilet stalls and shower stalls. They fed us a good meat and potatoes meal with chocolate cake for dessert, that was so good, we were massively hungry.

Then it was time for the night hike! They told us to bring lots of warm clothes, but it actually wasn't too cold. We chose to go on the night hike that was Level Two, out of three levels of intensity. First they had us following and holding on to a rope, yelling back at the people behind us when to switch sides of the rope because of trees in the way and stuff. That was pretty fun. But then we started going up and up, eventually on our right was a drop off of at least 20 feet. Keep in mind it was pitch black. Our leader in front had a flashlight, but because we were in the back we didn't get the light from it. We were trying not to use the flashlight Becca brought because we thought that was cheating, but by this time we were using it because Becca had slammed her shin into a stair and Tara had fallen in a ditch. If we didn't have a flashlight I don't honestly know if we all would have made it in one piece. So that was dangerous. We did make it though. After getting back, we didn't want to go to bed right away because it was still early, so we found a really cool room in the back of the building to hang out in. It had a ping pong table and the whole building sort of felt like you could go to Narnia at any moment, so we began calling that room Narnia, much to the probable confusion of everyone around us, haha.

I slept really well that night and we had breakfast, a hot and cold course. They wanted to feed us well for the day's activities, which were sort of randomly assigned. I wanted caving and canoeing, but I got rappelling and canoeing. Rappelling wasn't even a listed option in the email they sent out, and I was sort of nervous. First up, we met our leader for our activities, Graeme (say grey-um). He was a pretty cool guy, he took us canoeing in the morning. Most of us had been before, but he told us the basics and off we went (in our super attractive red waterproof pants). We were on a really big Loch, it was very calm and in between two mountain ranges with the beautiful morning mist on them. I wish I could have brought my camera on the activities but I was afraid it would get broken or something, and that would have been terrible. Anyway, Graeme had us play all these canoeing games, first we had to maneuver our canoe in a figure eight around a pier, and then we had to race each other while doing that, but first we had to spin around ten times and run to our canoes. It was intense and impossible to shove all 4 canoes around the pier at the same time, ha. Then he had us stand up in our canoes! We pretended we were on gondolas, it was scary at first cause I really didn't want to fall in, it was rather cold. But we did it, it was fun. He also had brought hot chocolate for us, so we had a break and drank that. Then he had us limbo under some branches while in our canoes, and finally we had to figure out a way to paddle the canoe while both people in the canoe touched both paddles with both hands. By this time, we had switched canoe partners so we made a new friend doing this, ha.

We had a lunch break with sandwiches and soup back at the hostel and then it was rappelling time. We had two other leaders with us for this, one girl from Edinburgh and another one who kept singing a lot and was a lot of fun. They took us to their indoor rock climbing room and we learned how the ropes work and practiced climbing in there. It was sort of scary. I'm not really that afraid of heights, but it is scary anyway. It's hard for me to find a good way to climb on those indoor ones, sometimes I get stuck and frustrated. But it's all very safe, we had helmets and harnesses on. Once you get to the top, you rappel down. So you grab the rope that's holding you, letting go of the wall (which is scary!) and bounce down, hitting your feet on the wall like you're sort of walking down. That's my favorite part, the going down part. So fun. We also learned how to hold the rope while another person is climbing, you attach it to yourself (well, actually, your harness) so you are the weight in the pulley system. It's cool.

Then we trekked outside to a 50 foot cliff. There were two options to get up it, an easier one and a harder one. I chose the easier one since I had never done this before and get frustrated easily, ha. But I managed to get up the easier one, it had sort of stairs. But I used my hands a lot and they got dirty with leaves and stuff. So then after we get up there, it's time to rappel down. We practiced indoors this different kind of pulley system where you control your rope, so the rope slides through your hands but there's a person at the top with another rope you're attached to, just in case. This is what we were doing down the 50 foot cliff. So when it was my turn I climbed down where Graeme was and got attached to the rope, and he handed me the other one. They then have you back up so your heels are just over the edge. This is the scariest part. Just imagine it. Eeeee! I had to hold on to Graeme's shoulder to get in the right spot, it's just so nerve wracking. So then, once you're on the edge, you just lower yourself down, using the rope and your feet like you're walking down the cliff. And you sort of bounce on and off it, one time my feet slipped off the wall and it was scary, but you're on a rope so it's not like you're going to fall. I did it twice, it was so much fun! I don't have any pictures of this either, unfortunately, but one of the girls in my group took some and is supposed to find me on Facebook, so I might have one of me rappelling soon.

We went back to the hostel, had tea and cake and then I went on a walk with some girls, that's where the pictures of the mountains are from. Dinner was chicken curry, which I'm not too keen on, but it was pretty good. There was a screening of Braveheart in the common room, of course, but we just hung out in Narnia until it was time for bed, ha. We left early this morning after breakfast, and stopped at Loch Lomond (yes, the one from the song) to take some pictures. We got back to Edinburgh at about 12:30pm, which is nice. I've had time to hang out in my room and do some homework. Anyway, the trip was a lot of fun, we were really lucky to be able to do this. IFSA also gave us some nice hoodies, so that was another exciting thing, ha. Sorry this entry was so long, but I hope at least it's interesting!

The hostel we stayed in

View of the mountains

Loch Lomond

Me rappelling!!!

On the shores of Loch Lomond