Barbados exchange visit summer 2011
19.10.11
This summer some lucky individuals undertook an exchange visit to the cadet force in Barbados. This is their story:
DAY ONE: Saturday 30th July
Hi all BSM Woolley here.
Well where do i start!!!!!! On Saturday morning the cadets arrived at Chilwell WETC in Nottingham, most cadets arrived by 10am.
On arrival all cadets were booked in at Chilwell, and were given the morning to socialise. After lunch on Saturday those cadets who were already at Chilwell went on to do an orienterring session with SMI Oates.
After approximately 2 hours of Orienterring the cadets were then given more time to socialise, cadets being cadets wanted to go and spend money over at Tesco at Chilwell.
During the day the cadets were asked what they had packed and yes i was brutal with the female cadets as their suitcases seemed heavier than everyone else's. So i took it upon myself to go through the cases with them and take out clothes that would not be needed. For instance we are away for 15 days and the females must of packed about 50 tops so i sacrefised some items of clothing and now looking back i think they thank me for this as their suitcases were under the weight limit once we arrived at the airport!!!!!!
On the evening of the 30th July the cadets were in their own time and we watched a few dvd's in the TA Centre to stop us from waking all the other people up in Chilwell on the early morning of Sunday 31 July 2011. Also during the evening the cadets ordered Pizza for supper and we all thought with an early morning get up and lots of travelling ahead the cadets would sleep well at least a couple of hours. I guess they proved us wrong and the cadets were awake during the night. So as you can well imagine it was a very long day for them!!!!!!
DAY TWO: Sunday 31 July 2011
Hi all Csgt Noy here well we travelled to Gatwick at 3am on two mini buses loaded down and struggling with the amount of kit the cadets packed. We arrived at about 6:50am with no problems, however trying to check in 16 cadets and 5 adults with all thier kit took us untill 8:45am.
We eventually boarded the plane at 9:30am where the cadets started to relax and settle down to sleep. take off was smooth with no problems and at last we were on our way.
After getting a goodie bag on the plane the cadets got really excited at more free stuff even if it was just a pair of socks a blanket a pillow and a mini toothbrush and tiny toothpaste they were still excited. then came the headphones and movie selection started
Lunch was served in the form of fish pie, maccoroni cheese or veg bake all with a side salad and as you can imagine the cadets didnt eat the healthy foods. films were watched or just snored through then came the egg sandwiches for evening meal.
Numerous hours were spent walking round the plane untill the captain announced that we needed to take our seats ready for landing in Barbados. 16 really excited cadets were now turning off tv's putting on seat belts and wondering how long it would take to land.
After a safe landing and lots of waiting for us to be able to disembark from the plane we finally got our feet back on solid ground all be it very wet ground. After coming through passport control which looked complicated as travelling as a group made it harder to get people through as they were asking questions to everyone etc.
It was a long tiring day after some people had been awake for 50 hours or there abouts and i think this is due to the excitement!. after arriving at paragon camp we were all shown to our rooms to sort our kit and unpack.this was followed by the opening ceremony attended by all the participants in the competition and local MP Hon. Richard Sealy who is the minister for tourism closly followed by a good 10 hours sleep.
DAY THREE: Monday 1 August 2011
Hi all Bdr Lisa Mcintyre speaking here. The 1st of August was our first proper day out with all the other teams,we all caught buses and went on a island tour, our first stop was the kadooment carnival which in barbados is a national holiday to celebrate their Crop Over period.Although the weather wasnt good at all, it was a very rainy day. Throughout the carnival we seen all sorts of people from all different parts of the world.This was the day when we all seen Rhianna she was also celebrating the kadooment carnival,loads of photos were taken and overall everybody enjoyed theirselves, this was the day where a lot of manpoints were given out. Man points are awarded to cadets when they do something 'manly', they can also be lost for doing something 'unmanly'. For example - Cadet Ruben 'Cuban' Bell lost 5 points as he couldnt undo a bottle, however Rachel Beasley gained 5 points as she was that one that opened it for him.We then got back on the bus and travelled to the beach which we then sat and had dinner,whie waiting for dinner everyone decided to go in to the sea, although we only got told to go up to our knees in the water but everyone decided to come out soaking wet,and to make it better the weather still didnt change and decided to rain more and more. After dinner we got back on the bus for our final stop at cheffette which everyone brought a lovely milkshake. We then travelled back to camp, got our brief for what was happening the next day and prepared ourselves for the team run in the morning.
DAY FOUR: Tuesday 2 August 2011
Hi all C/Sgt Hannah Anderson here . The 2nd of August is my 18th Birthday so to start the day off nicely we got up at 4.30am and were doing our fitness tests by 5am. We began with a run followed by some press up's, this was just to check our general level of fitness for the competition and you'll be happy to know we all passed 
. After this we all showered and had breakfast.
The rest of the day was ainly given over to Rotational training . For this our team began to learn the SLR drill , which was completley new to them as we do not do this in the UK. The weather for this bit of training was incredibly sunny and hot and we all managed to end up looking like lobsters. This amused a lot of the cadets from the other countries .
In the afternoon me and 4 other cadets took part in the first part of the competition which was a 2mile timed team run. The weather was so hot and for us this made it just that bit harder . We did however all manage to complete it and got some really good times ! After this we once again showered and changed to go out.
At the night time we went to T.G.I Fridays for mine and Mcreaveys birthday . We all had a really nice meal and it was great to have something other than rice and peas !! All in all it was a great day.
DAY SIX: Thursday 4th August 2011
We got up at 0600hrs washed and dress into sport kit and across for breakfest at 0800hrs
Today was sports day all went ok apart from one injury to a member of our team, weather was looking good to start off with, but the rain started, so we all got out of the rain and all the teams started to sing songs, we started the sports day with the running and relay events we all had fun with the human pyramid we formed and posed for some photos,we had fun with the tug of war and had lunch on the field ( rice & peas lol ) and then we had a water ballon game with the adults taking part in a 100 mtr run then we all waited for the results, after results we all went back to camp for tea
Later we started to get ready for the survival camp, with all our kit we got onto the bus
L/Cpl J Stoner
DAY SEVEN : Friday 5th August 2011
Hi L/cpl Daniel Wheat here, well the survival camp main day after a patrol out for a school we stopped in the previous night to the survival camp area.. We spent most of the time building the survival improvised shelter using vines as rope and large leaves as a roof to make it waterproof me and L/bdr James macareavey commanded this part, whilst cpl Jonathan stoner made the improvised toilet area this was just for judges to look at and wasn't used by any of us at all.
whilst all this was happening we was all applying sun cream SPF 30 which S/Sgt George Sykes was in control of, S/Sgt Sykes was also in control of the water to make sure the team took on plenty of water through out the day. our security consisted of 3 sentry posts which gave us 360 degrees cover of our habour area which is the eyes and ears of a section at rest this was switched around between the group how was looking out every half hour.
Cpl Becki McKay and L/Bdr smith was in-charge of our food and cooking area this was also had its own area just for the judges to see aswell after the judges had marked and some of the Barbados cadet police tried to infiltrate our habour and failed we was asked to move in towards the central point so the Barbados defense force could patrol round us and protect us at night this was what happened on day 10 thanks for reading .
DAY EIGHT : Sunday 7th August 2011
L/Cpl Rob Newby here well today everyone was up at 4:30am for the triathlon. Each team had 2 individuals and a team. Competing for notts it was me and L/Cpl Stoner individual with L/Cpls Smith, Wheat and Bell in the team. The triathlon was a 100m swim, 4km bike and a 4km run. Notts did really well with me coming 2nd and Stoner coming 6th the team came in at 4th This put a huge smile on everyones face which was helped by breakfast being brought down to the beach for us followed by everyone going swimming
That afternoon was the part of the competiton everyone was probably dreading the most. The drill. After spending most of the day prepping kit and final touches to the routine we all got on buses to go to where it was going to take place. Whilst all of the other teams were either performing or spectating, the Notts team were around the back of the building practising our routines. Then it was our time to fall in, we watched the team before us come off and marched on. Considering our lack of SLR drill practise we did really well we were marched off by Nedge before heading round the back again sweating bucket loads to practise the free style routine. We came in to watch Trinidad and Tobago finish their impressive rifle spinning routine before marching back on to show our freestyle routine put together by maam and nedge. it was a good routine but again our lack of SLR drill was showing. But overall we did better than expecting coming in 5th place out of 8 so a good performance from the team.
DAY TEN : Monday 8th August 2011
It was a early start as always and we go out of bed with so problems because by now we all where very tired. Had breakfast and then we got changed into our sports uniforms and then got fell in on the road in our countys. Then the people who where not doing the team relay run spread them selves over the 1k running track. The people in the team went to their start positions and the person who was running first got given a rifle and we where told to us it as a batton.
When it was turn to take the rifle off the person who ran before me we where in a very good poision. I think 2 nd because I Had to over take this one girl from Granada and that was not to hard and then I past the rifle to newby who is a very strong runner and he kept the other teams off to let us win.
We then had lunch at camp acre that we got into one of the Barbados cadet corps mini bus and then we had some more amazing driving from the BDF that really scared me the first time.
We got to the center of Bridgetown and walked around for a bit and then we found some duty free shops and we spent hours in there. After our shopping we went to Barbados' best and most loved fast food restaurant. Cheffette !! Then after eating loads more we got back on the mini bus and went back to camp and we sat under the tent like thing and chilled out for the rest of the night and the sun sets do look better in Barbados.
L/Cpl R. Bell
DAY ELEVEN: Tuesday 9th August 2011
Today was both the shooting competition and the awards ceremony. The shooting was due to start at 0900, but us being first to shoot, we were of course ready early and so began before this. Our first shoot didn’t go too well, we left multiple targets up and used all our ammunition and time. So the Wheat, Dunne, McAreavey, Mcintyre, Mckay and myself went to discuss tactics, which resulted in the simple plan of ‘hitting the big ones first.’ After the other teams had shot our score was 5th position and we then had a chance to reshoot. The tactics worked and we quickly had all targets down with something like 3 minutes and 21 rounds left.
This resulted in us coming first position in the shooting. Later that afternoon was the awards ceremony, it was in a big building in the middle of Bridgetown and started about 1500. It started with music from the cadet band and then the awards for each competition were given out. It seemed to all of us that Barbados was getting all of the first place trophies! But we weren’t doing too badly either. There was then a section with awards of the Caribbean Cadet medals for adults of the region who had made significant contributions to cadets over the past years. Then came the position awards; 3rd place, Trinidad & Tobago, 2nd Notts ACF, 1st Barbados.
SSgt George Sykes
DAY FOURTEEN: Friday 12th August 2011
Hi everyone, this is Cpl Beasley.
Today, we were determined not to run by Bajan timings (waiting...waiting...then leav..no more waiting so we all made the effort to leave by 9am because we were going snorkelling with turtles!! The bus took us to a water sports centre that was next to the Hilton hotel. Then we all went on a boat to the snorkel/dive sites where there were 3 ship wrecks and lots of fish. The turtles were really tame and it was awesome to stroke them and dive down to swim with them. One of the wrecks was from WW1 and we could swim in the side and come out its roof.
L/Cpl Smith drove the boat back to shore while we all hung on for dear life! Lol nr, she was a good driver . After that, we went to the beach just along from the Hilton and everyone chilled, sunbathed and swam in the gorrrggeous sea.
At around 1:30pm, lunch was brought out to us by the BCC. After a satisfying meal; the rare speciality of rice, chicken and juice, some of us went back to the beach and others chilled in the shade.
Taking a short break from the beach, a group of us took a walk 'cough' (a trek) into Bridgetown, where we bartered in a few jewellery stores and enjoyed the wander.
Next, the bus picked us up at around 6:30pm to take us back to camp. Everyone got dressed up because we were headed to Oistins and Friday night is party night there! Oistins is a little town by the sea (it's literally on the beach) that has lots of market stalls that sell souvenirs - it has bars, loads of fresh fish places, there’re restaurants and it has a big stage in the centre where they play loud music and dance. The atmosphere was great. Everyone really enjoyed the night and got into the spirit of Oistins .
Awesome day!!