Year Fives went to the CBC centre every year. CBC stood for Challenge by Choice and it meant that you could choose how hard to challenge yourself on lots of activities. The centre was in Wales, near Mount Snowdon, so they were going to be on the coach for hours.
Mount Snowdon was the highest mountain in the world. Well, that was what Charles reckoned.
Wasim didn’t believe Charles, and Mrs Scott had told them that Snowdon was very small compared to Everest and K2 and lots of other mountains, but that it was still quite high. And they were going up it!
Charles said that they’d measured the other ones wrong and that Mount Snowdon was definitely the highest. But, as it had been Charles who had measured the hall and made Wasim announce in Achievers Assembly that it was 412 km long, Wasim believed Mrs Scott.
Whatever it was, it was still a long way away and in the sweltering coach even Wasim thought that it would be safe to take off his survival gear. His hat, gloves and anorak came off, and still the coach was steaming.
Up and down went Mrs Scott and Mr Abbot with the sick bucket, and when Donna was sick for the third time Mr Bird volunteered, and after that Wasim had to sit with the bucket and the smell at his feet.
“Gross, Waz,” gagged Charles as he did one of his walks down to the front to ask if they were nearly there yet.
“It wasn’t me,” blustered Wasim, but Charles stroked an imaginary beard to show that he didn’t believe him, and Wasim couldn’t do anything about it.
At least the smell stopped him thinking about food for a few minutes!
But when the coach lumbered into a motorway service station and the bucket got taken away, Wasim started to dream of the kebab, the Mars and the coke cans bulging in his carrier bag. This was a challenge, a big challenge. Everybody else was going to be having their lunch now.
Luckily they were all too bothered with their own food to be interested in what Wasim was or was not eating. He carefully fiddled about in his bag, so that by the time the teachers started giving out fruit and drinks he had joined a toilet line, and then made for some swings where the early finishers were dashing.
Then it was back on the coach and another two hours of sweating, watching the sick bucket be re-filled, answering Bird the Nerd’s questions about home and listening to him telling everyone about the places they were passing.
Eventually they came off the motorway, and instead of the crowded streets of houses and flats that they were used to around their school, they saw tiny white cottages and schools that were so small they could fit into their hall.
“We should play them at football,” shouted Ellis.
“You’d still lose,” Mr Abbot winked and Ellis went all red because he didn’t know if it was a joke or not. They had lost every match last season, even though they’d had the Teamwork 10,000 coaches in.
In fact, sitting with Bird the Nerd wasn’t too bad. Once they were off the motorway, he taught the people in the nearby seats to play Pub Cricket. You got a cricket point, a run, for every leg of the animal or person on the pub sign. If it didn’t have any legs you were out, just like in cricket. By the end, everybody was crowding round wanting to play and getting told off for being out of their seats. And rather than having the worst seat, Wasim secretly thought that sitting with Bird the Nerd might have been the best spot, especially when they passed The George and Dragon and he scored six runs. Two for George and four for the dragon.
“Dragons have eight legs,” he tried to claim, but six was still good. Anyway, it kept his mind off his tummy, which was now beginning to complain seriously. It kept rumbling loudly, and Wasim had gone from feeling a bit sick to it really hurting. The thirst was the worst thing, though. Breathing the boiling air on the coach into his sandpaper throat was agony, and he couldn’t even manage a groan when the coach struggled up one of a million hills and they passed a pub called The Fox and Hounds. That meant that Mrs Scott beat his George and Dragon, because a fox had four legs and there must have been hundreds of hounds in the picture. Nobody cared, though, because now they were nearly there!
“Hard luck, Wasim,” laughed Mr Bird, as they passed a brown road sign that read “CBC Centre, One mile” and then the same in Welsh.
The teacher put out a hand and Wasim shook it, and risked his throat by joining in the cheers as they passed all of the things they had been looking forward to: a climbing wall, a circular track with quad bikes parked and ready to go, a giant tree platform and, best of all – bristling way above the coach roof – the ‘commando cord’, a great zip wire stretching from a platform halfway up into space.
CBC. Challenge by Choice.
They were there!