Welcome to the First Year Blog!
What a busy week – there are certainly lots of tired faces in the corridor today but I do hope that everyone has enjoyed this week as much as I have! Although the focus of this blog is on Avon Tyrrell, I hope that everyone has also enjoyed the three days they have had in School this week, including today’s fixtures for our footballers and tomorrow’s fixtures for football and rugby! Good luck to all involved!
AVON TYRRELL ADVENTURE
This week saw two groups of First Years travel down to the New Forest for their trips to Avon Tyrrell – in this week’s blog we are focusing on the first of the two trips involving 1L, 1P and 1W. Next week’s blog will be all about the second trip, so please do send your reports my way if you are in 1B, 1F, 1H or 1J!
Avon Tyrrell was an amazing trip that I will never forget. Every single activity left me excited and I never got bored. Let me share my experience with you. On the coach everyone couldn’t wait to get to get to there but time seemed to hold us back and we had a two hour journey! As soon as we reached or destination, I could not anticipate the future the trip held. We left our bags in the main hall and started our first activity which was low and high ropes. The low ropes were a great start to our stay. The high ropes were my favourite bit, and it was amazing to see everyone reach the top without any hesitation despite having many acrophobic teammates in our group. We all knew that we were in this as a team and that we all were part of let’s say this ‘Hamptonianship.’
Lunchtime commenced and my stomach sounded like thunder. The meal was extremely nice, and I really liked cheese sauce on the pasta. I extremely enjoyed lunch, but time had beaten us, and it was tine to go to the next activity. At orienteering, we got into our groups and began the challenge of finding the checkpoints. This was a good way to explore the site, walking through the wilderness made me feel like I was part of a jungle tribe. I encountered several different mini beasts in the undergrowth. What a great time! After problem solving, we had dinner. This was probably my favourite meal of the day as we got to have a pudding. We then went on a night walk and got to know more about this stunning house’s history. Following this, we went to pick fennel for our tea to drink before bed. I found the tea OK, if a little bit sickly! After getting ready for bed it was time to sleep but what is the fun in that? There is none! So, I decided to eat a bit of my snacks before sleeping. Then my eyes fluttered slowly down, and I slept.
I found myself awake at around 6am. “Not bad” I thought. After getting told to be quiet like five times it was time to get ready to go rafting! But before we hit the water, we must earn points to make our raft. We did various activities to earn these points and it was very fun. Every minute of it. After assembling the raft it, was time to sail it on the water. We were splashing other boats and getting wet ourselves. What an experience!
By Ethan S-W (1L)
I had an amazing trip to Avon Tyrrell, it was a great way to connect with my fellow peers. We learnt a lot of new skills and made new friends. My personal favourite activity was building and sailing our rafts. Sadly, our raft wasn’t the best. As a result, me and my friend had to jump into the water and push the boat. It was freezing in the lake, but we toughed it out and pushed our boat. We were glad when we were able to get out the water.
My second favourite activity was the high ropes. We faced many tough challenges, but we all managed to do it. We all had to pitch in as we had to pull the rope for the person climbing, it was an amazing way to get to know and trust our peers. We also had to work together and work our way through many challenging puzzles our teamwork was amazing. We all had an exciting adventure running around the New Forest in our group of fours. Looking on our maps and getting lost was an amazing experience we ran left and right but the grasp of New Forest was too strong. Eventually we all got separated but nonetheless we still had an amazing time.
Our night walk was fantastic. We walked in the night and listened to creepy ghost stories related to the house. As we trudged through the night, we arrived at the lake which had a frog in it. We all leaned over and looked at the frog. It was so tiny. We witnessed it stupidly walk of the edge of the lake. It was hilarious. As we walked deeper into the forest, we stumbled across some materials to create tea. The tea was amazing, and I would have it every day if I could. With that our night walk had ended and we all walked towards the house to rest for the trip home. What a great trip we had.
By Leonardo P X (1L)
When we arrived at Avon Tyrrell, I knew from the surroundings that this trip would be spectacular. There were trees everywhere, and the old house was the only building for miles. After we settled in, we were split into groups; our first activity was a competition to do with orienteering. We did find it challenging to find the specific markers on the trees, but we did manage to get most of them. At the same time, we were exploring every part of the field and campsite (we even caught sight of the lake).
Up next were the high and low ropes, which were my favourite part. We had just eaten a tasty lunch and were ready for the afternoon. When we were on the low ropes, there were many separate activities. We had to all swing on a rope between the two tiny crates that were on the ground (we could barely fit on them)! Then, we were given eight logs and a ten metre span of twin wires. We had to build a bridge, and all get across the ‘lava’. After at least 20 minutes of trying, we managed. Now we had three wires to use to cross more ‘lava’. On the first, we had to hold on to a moving rope and walk across one wire. The other two were like bridges.
On the high ropes, we had two activities. For the first one, we had to climb up a diagonal beam, then a tree and finally walk across the last beam and touch the tree (I fell off near the last tree). The last one we had was us climbing up a very tall tree, walking across a beam, and dangling upside down like a sloth from that beam. I love diving off from high elevations; I just did that head first for about halfway down. After many team building activities, like electric maze, we moved on to dinner. When we had eaten that, we went to our rooms. Mine had four of us in it. We spent a couple of minutes helping each other to make our beds. When we had done that, it was time for the night walk. We went out into the forest and picked hundreds of pine needles off the trees. We dropped them into hot water and created the most delicious tea ever. We were told the story of the old house, that it was won by a bet and stored unknown military equipment which nobody was permitted to see until 2050.
When we had breakfast the next morning, we were doing more teambuilding activities. We started off at the high ropes, where we had to climb up a very hard netting and ladder, and get to a height of at least 15 meters. It was all slippery from that night’s rain. We then had other games that included catapults, archery and teamwork. To finish off the amazing trip, we were out on the lake building a raft. It had to be a specific design, and built using many knots, two planks and four barrels. When it was time to sail, we rolled it out onto the water and hoped for the best. Although we were splashed by other First Years, our raft floated, and we were not soaked in water at the end. We had an amazing time, but what mattered even more is that we made many new friendships and learnt different people’s personalities. This trip was the foundation to help us all to be one big school community.
By Alex Z (1P)
This week’s main talking point and something which many people will be writing about is Avon Tyrrell. And in true sheep style, I am going to follow the crowd and write my own part about Avon Tyrrell. After a two hour journey in the morning, 1L along with two other forms arrived at Avon Tyrrell. We were straight into activities with our first one being low ropes. We navigated our way along the low ropes which included a weight balancing game, a game where we had to crawl through a roped spider web and one where we had to cross to a plank using only a tyre on a string. Afterwards, we played some outdoor teambuilding games like a space hopper race and a game called Sheep and Shepherds (you can tell I like sheep, can’t you?) which is where a shepherd (who is unable to walk or speak or move his arms) has to gather all of his sheep (who are blindfolded) into a pen, the only thing the shepherd has is a whistle which he uses to communicate with the sheep to get into a pen and we honestly did terribly at it and all of the sheep ended up breaking into the pen by walking into the wooden sticks which were used as walls.
We then did my favourite, high ropes. I love the thrill of climbing up and I feel motivated to reach the top. The Leap of Faith was very scary though as when you reach the top to jump off (attached to a harness, or course) it wobbles a lot, and it feels like you are unstable. I managed to reach the bar, but some people managed to not just reach the bar but do a pull-up on it as well (aka Leo S)!! After a surprisingly good sleep in a room of ten, we played some more fun games but my favourite was, without a doubt, the archery which I was pretty good at, considering I had never done it before. The incredible time ended with a raft race where we raced rafts that we created during raft building, it was tense but unfortunately our team did not win but it was an enjoyable time. The food was very nice with some incredible meals like pasta for our first lunch and PIZZA(!!) for dinner. It was a great trip with many experiences I never thought I would have. I want to finish this off with one last statement. I am not going to say this for the sake of it but, Avon Tyrrell was a genuinely fun, enjoyable, interesting and action-packed trip and it was certainly the best way to kick off life as a proper Hamptonian.
By Rishi K (1L)
This week, First Years went to Avon Tyrrell for our overnight residential, and I would like to write about my thoroughly enjoyable experience there. We set off at 8:55 for a loud and fun coach ride to Avon Tyrrell, arriving around 11 o’clock. Only minutes after, we were jumping straight into an exciting problem-solving activity, dividing us into groups of eight and giving us challenging problems! After, we took part in a miniature treasure hunt taking us around the whole site. Then my group did the high ropes where we took part in difficult and exhilarating climbs. After the climbing, everybody was exhausted, so we ate dinner and went for a fascinating night walk, trying to spot wildlife. Soon after, we were given our dormitories and went for a well-deserved sleep. After a restorative nap, we ate breakfast and left for our final activity, raft building, which required a bundle of fun games all counting to our overall score. Finally, we ate a delicious lunch and said our sad goodbyes to Avon Tyrrell as we set off back to Hampton. What an amazing two days!
By Seb M (1W)
FAMOUS OLD HAMPTONIAN
Last weekend we had a very famous Hampton Old Boy at my dad’s work, so I decided to go along to quiz him on his time at Hampton. He was really kind and very happy to chat about all things related to Hampton. Apparently, his favourite thing about Hampton was hiding on the school premises and playing his electric guitar which was not allowed at the time. He even gave me a picture for me to keep. Can you guess who he was?
By Benny R (1F)
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: MY FIRST DAY
Hello, my name is Shaurya; I’m in the First Year Form 1L. It was my first day of school, I was exuberant and a little overwhelmed. In my mind there were millions of thoughts rushing through like, how would the new school be? Will the teachers be amicable? As I entered Hampton via the main entrance, wearing my formal jet black blazer, one of the Senior Prefects escorted me into my form room (F11). My teachers are Mr Jimenez (a Chemistry teacher) and Miss Carolan (an Art teacher).
Throughout the day we played some exciting games! Some were called: A memory name game and finding the things written on a sheet of paper.
After that, we were peckish and were served a majestic lunch in a grand dining room which looked like Hogwarts Dining Hall! Finally, I went to the 3G to play football, we embarked on a journey that felt like passing through a maze, but thankfully I had my trusty map provided by school.
We found many treasures on the way! We were tasked with finding the Head of First Year office but alas, I got lost five times in the space of five minutes! Out of the blue, one photographer invited our group for a short interview. Little did I know that I would be in the video posted on Hampton School website and social media. I’m famous now!
During my first week I attended many clubs such as chess, table tennis and badminton. Furthermore, I borrowed some phenomenal books from the gigantic school library.
I can’t wait for other upcoming events…!!!!
By Shaurya D (1L)
Clubs Galore
Take a look at the full list of all clubs, societies and other co-curricular activities on offer in the booklet below:
Hampton Sports Chronicle
Great to see our budding sports journalists getting their match reports published in Hampton Sports Chronicle online. Well done to Reyansh J (1L), for producing the first match report of the year with his . Take a look at HSC online here. If you fancy getting involved, email Mr Sharkey in the English department.
SPECIAL SHOUT OUTS!
Magnus O’L (1B) received his first cap for Surrey County Cricket club at the end of the summer. He was selected to play in two of the County games at the end of the summer against Kent and LSCA. He was also awarded ‘Fielder of the year’ by East Molesey Cricket Club, taking 16 catches and run outs, three of which were in the County Cup Final which his team won for the third year in a row. Well done on such amazing cricketing achievements, Magnus – we can’t wait to see what you get up to next!
We love to hear about what you have been getting up to outside of school and to celebrate your successes in the First Year Blog! Please do send any information about any of your achievements through to Mr Fuldner (d.fuldner@hamptonschool.org.uk).
The Hampton Hunt
Each week I will set you a challenge where you need to find out a random fact, number or indeed anything else around the School – you won’t be able to do this from home! Points for the interform competition will be awarded to the Form with the most correct entries over the course of the term! You have until the end of Wednesday to complete the challenge; you will find out in next week’s blog if you’re correct, and you will be given a merit by your Form Tutor the following Monday. And who knows – you might get to know the School better in the process!
Last week’s challenge: How many windows does the Avon Tyrrell house have? If you happened to bump into the sign or if you listened carefully on the night walk, you would know the correct answer is 365 – well done to Charles B (1F), James A (1H), Ruhaan V (1B), Luoke W (1H), Ian L (1F), Ilakian D (1H), Julian M (1H), George W (1W), Ollie S (1H), Thomas Y (1W) and Reuben N (1W) for getting the correct answer! A good week for 1H. Make sure you collect a merit from your Form Tutor next week!
This week’s challenge:
How many football and rugby pitches are there in total, excluding the 3G?
