As the sun rose it felt like a new beginning, like I was a new person. I was now a foreigner, I looked different, I smelt different and I spoke a different language. If you think about it, we do the same when foreigners enter our country, but we don’t know that were doing it, I thought about this, and realised that the native people weren’t being as rude as maybe I thought, but just acting the same as we would if they were in our country.
Accustomed with coach journeys are the long hours, and pointless boring films that we had never heard of before, I think they should put it in brochures, “Pointless Videos available”, they probably do it to make the coach fall asleep, so the drivers can concentrate better, or just to be plainly rude, and shut us all up.
We all started to become restless as the day went on, we had been travelling for around 8hours by this point, but making steady progress, stopping every 4hours or so. Every time we did stop, the thought entered my mind once again, how things were so different here, the drivers don’t care, toilets are un regularly cleaned and they speak a different language, wasn’t France in the Euro???
We arrived soon after lunch, hot, tired and relieved that we had finally got to our destination, Maymac a small French town, in the South of France. It was very traditional, with the old style buildings, but it was slowly being taken over by modern buildings, such as a Cinema, Football Stadium and a Youth Centre.
The Rugby Centre was on top of a hill, with spectacular views down into the village below, the weather was good, sunny with the occasional cloud lingering around the top of the centre. I had two main impressions of the centre when I arrived, one of disbelief, and also one of destruction, like a bomb had hit it; it looked tidier than my room! Also I was hoping that the drivers would say we were in the wrong place, and we would move up the road to a better, more “equipped” centre.
By the time we were introduced to the instructors, it was time to gather our belongings and find our rooms. They were basic yet adequate, I was surprised to find that it had all four walls standing and was pretty well kept, with plain white walls, and 5 bunk beds somehow pushed into the room, leaving minimal space to move or put your belongings.
The 1st night there was strange; I didn’t get much sleep and just laid there thinking what am I doing here! But finally when I did manage to get to sleep, the warm stale air and strange noises made it difficult to sleep and I couldn’t sustain it for long periods.
The alarm call was sudden, quick yet did its job “Room Inspection 8.20” meant a lot to us, so we all tried to get out of bed at the same time only to find there wasn’t enough floor space for us to move, so some offered to go back to bed, mainly the lazy ones. As for me, I dragged myself, across the cold damp floor into one of the bathroom areas, here every morning was the same, the sound of “Good Morning” and grunts back, showed how appreciative we were of this time, no one had experienced this before I could tell. Walking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame back to our room, it looked like the whole centre was covered in unexploded bombs, the room was a mess, clothes everywhere, so frantic hands were pushing clothes which weren’t even there’s under any old bed, just to make sure we had the best choice of breakfast.
The day in my opinion would have been exciting if there was any wind, we had water sports and in sailing the wind is essential, it soon became boring, and it was more interesting to capsize getting wet and “taking” everyone else’s boats. The highlight of the day must have been canoeing, an overweight bus driver, decided to take part in the 3man canoes, with two smaller younger males, they proceeded to paddle around the lake, although none of them looked quite happy, the obscure angle that the boat was in the water soon gave the impression that they didn’t want to be in that boat.
Lunchtimes were always exciting as it was a mad rush to get to the baguettes, before the longest ones were gone. We had one or two of those and a piece of fruit, minimal but satisfactory as I wanted to loose weight. In general the food could be described as minimal portions, and a little poorly prepared, but I think im just about surviving so im not really complaining. Nothing like home cooking, but nothing is when you’re not at home.
Evening entertainments were fun filled but often long and sometimes boring. The best in my opinion, was Tag Rugby. It was against another team staying in the centre. My blasting runs down the wing surprised even the teachers as they never knew I was that fast, but when I put my mind to it, I can do anything, even if I get the stick and jokes, from Mr Roderick, nothing I cant cope with. The win against the other team there in Tag Rugby gave our team confidence that we could pull off a win against them in Fridays proper game.
Various injuries sustained our team and I was no exception, A clumsy Oath, mentioning no names found it hard to run around me and decided to run at me knocking me flying as well as him, with feet and arms spread all over the pitch, he managed to stand up into my knee, putting full weight onto it, I cant actually remember the last time I shouted so loud “Get off!!!” this limited my movements for the next two days, although a little light training soon helped and I was back into peak, pristine condition, in my dreams I muttered to myself. Also during the Game on the last day I managed to fracture my fingers when my arm was so rudely trodden on, and twisted around 270 degrees the wrong way, although I didn’t know it, when we got back to England I noticed my finger was at a very obscure angle and I couldn’t move it, so I went to get it checked out, and I found out about it, it was a surprise to me and I had also pulled all the ligaments in my hand, and that’s why I couldn’t move it.
Friday soon came, various activities completed, and lots of training done. This was the test, game time. We lined up for the start, focused, with fire in our eyes, ready to slaughter and take down the confidant opposition. With high quality training from Mr Larcombe and Mr Roderick and various coaches at the centre, we had a triumphant win, and celebrated in the evening with a karaoke night in the bar. Although the last day should strictly be the best, it wasn’t in my opinion, the only highlight was my excellent rendition of “Wild Thing” and the Mr Burley Mr Hunt duet.
The whole trip may have been different to what I expected, but the trip started on a high and finished with an electronic frenzy of not wanting to leave. The whole group was a credit to the College, and the behaviour was exceptional.
