Following our amazing 30th birthday celebrations, VICTA held an activity break for 18-29 years at the Caldecotte Xperience in Milton Keynes. As always, this trip had bundles of laughs and plenty of activities.
We were pleased to welcome some new faces to this activity as well as may familiar VICTA participants, all getting to know each other better over lunch before heading out to tackle the climbing wall.

After conquering many fears and challenging one another to vertical races we then moved on to have a go at archery. Our challenge was to be able to pop some of the balloons with our arrows, and boy we did! Of the 20 that were positioned on our targets, only three balloons survived! We definitely had some natural Robin Hoods in the group.

After a nice relaxed evening, with the group having a go at helping to prepare our dinner of jacket potatoes with chilli con carne, we all settled down for a movie.

Day two saw brought more challenges, beginning with the crate stack: the aim, to build the tallest tower out of milk crates. The winning team managed to build a tower 11 levels high! After this amazing feat, how could we follow it up? Well, with some lunch first, and then the ‘postman’s walk’ and then the ‘leap of faith’. Both of these required nerves of steel and the ability to jump off tall poles and swing like Tarzan.

That evening, we ordered pizzas and enjoyed an evening in with some card games and plenty of laughs.
Day three, we began with some abseiling. We split into two smaller groups, one group who had never abseiled before, started off learning the basics before heading up to the top of the tower and either going down the very middle of the tower, or abseiling down the side of the tower, both equally as challenging as the other.

We then had a longer lunch before jumping into a minibus and heading to iFLY Indoor Skydiving in Central Milton Keynes. For some of us, it was our first go at indoor skydiving. After a brief introduction and some rules for when inside the wind tunnel, we headed up into the wind tunnel to have a go. With the winds reaching upwards of 100mph we certainly got an experience. Even Superman joined us for a spot of skydiving! Everyone enjoyed a couple of goes each which was the equivalent of skydiving 12,000 feet from a plane, three times.

After our amazing experience of indoor skydiving we then travelled back to Caldecotte for our evening activities of bushcraft and caving. Bushcraft involved half the group learning how to build a small campfire and the types of small twigs and fuels used to make a fire last longer. The other half of our group went out into the caving, crawling through tunnels and gaps of various sizes. After such a busy day, we went out for dinner to a nearby pub and enjoyed each other’s company for one final evening before heading back to the centre.

Our final day saw us having a go at zorbing which provided us with plenty of laughs as each of the group were sealed into a large plastic ball and set off out onto the pool of water. Cue lots of falling over, running around like hamsters and many giggles.

After all of this we headed home complete with new friends, skills and a feeling of independence. We extend our thanks to the staff at Caldecotte Xperience and iFLY Milton Keynes for helping us with all of the activities and providing us with plenty of fun and new life experiences. And finally, to our volunteers, a huge thank you for helping support the group through all of the challenges and getting stuck in when needed.
We now look to 2018 for our next 18 to 29 youth break.

By John Smith
Activities Coordinator

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