Venture Camp 2009

This year’s Venture Camp saw us return to the beautiful and rather wet, Calvert Trust in Kielder Water. Kielder proved a popular centre in 2007, especially because of the on-site indoor pool and the infamous food fight!

We made full use of the centre’s ample facilities; film screenings in the TV room, ball games and arts and crafts in the gym, karaoke in the lounge and water-fights in the grounds. The heated pool was booked for our personal use every night, although our peaceful swims were twice infiltrated, once by a bat and secondly by a giant penguin!

This year’s theme was The Oscars, with teams split into Paramount, Fox and Universal. All teams used the awesome back drop of the centre as a set for their own Oscar winning films; these were screened at the last night party where the weeks’ celebrities were treated to a ‘champagne’ reception after gliding down the red carpet. The films showed ‘Tarzan’ on the King Swing, ‘Simba’ on the climbing wall, the rest of the cast of ‘The Lion King’ on a golf buggy ride through the ‘jungle’ and Forest Gump jogging along the nature trail.

All groups got along fantastically, with everyone getting to know each other very quickly in a short space of time and demonstrating so well how PHAB brings together and fully integrates so many people of different backgrounds, abilities and, above all, personalities! Two days were spent in whole group activities, including a full day down on the lake canoeing, sailing and generally getting wet.

Wednesday saw the Camp pay the Angel of the North a visit on route to the Metro Centre (Britain’s biggest shopping centre) for shopping, cinema, and high class dining! Awards were presented to the Oscar nominees after the nights’ film screenings with the star award going to Rochelle for her general star quality and constant smiling! Another awesome Venture Camp!