On Sunday 24th July, I arrived at Woodhouse Park about 30mins early at 10am. It was Alan's 60th so we gave him a cards and then I was checked to make sure I had by passport and EHIC. My bag was then weighed (and was easily light enough) and tags were then put on it before I was given my UK contingnet wristband. I went outside and chatted to various people as more and more of us came in.
Eventually we gathered round in a circle and sang happy birthday to Alan and Harry. They had a cake with the two dinosaurs on with each of their faces on one of the dinosaurs. We then gave Alan some presents which, as well as other things, were a inflatable zimma frame, and a pair on Avonasaurus branded boxers.
We then all gathered round the flag pole for some group pictures taken by our parents and some local newspapers. After than, we started to say our goodbyes and took all our bags down to the coach which was waiting just outside woodhouse, by the entrance - this was the first time we properly realized, just how badly designed our bags really were!
We then loaded our bags onto the coach and said our final goodbyes to our parents and to Kathryn. We went onto the bus and waved goodbye as we headed for London!
On the way we stopped at reading services where I saw someone who I knew from school. After about 45 minutes we set off again and before not to long we all started to cheer because we had arrived at Heathrow airport.
The coach took us to terminal three, where we all got off and quickly went into our 'buddies' off three - ours was me, Kris and Chris. We then got trolleys and put our large bags on them and then went into the terminal.
We joined the back of the cue for our plane check in. In front of us were the unit from Cambridgeshire who'd be on the plane with us.
After we were checked in we were given free time for about an hour. We went to some of the shops including a British souvineer shop so some people could get more stuff to swap at the jamboree and WHSmiths to get some sudoku books before sitting down in the corridor and chatting for most of the time. We then met back up as a group and went through security. I got through fine but lots of people had to remove/empty bags and cloths and Alan (because of his hip-replacement) had to have a full body search.
We then bought some drinks from WHSmiths (because we'd had to drink/empty all our liquids before going through security). We then met back up and Kev showed me the newly released 'Jamboree App' and I quickly downloaded the App while we still had free WiFi at Heathrow. At 18:10 we got on the plane, I was sitting next to two people from the Cambridgeshire Unit (Alyson and Richard). At 18:15 the plane left and we had a TV in front of us which showed in front of the plane whilst we were on the ground and below the plane whilst we were in the air. We chatted as a group of about seven with the row in front of us and some others. After about two hours we landed at Copenhagen airport. Once there we got off the plane and went through passport patrol and instantly saw just how much nicer the airport was than Heathrow. We then went to baggage reclaim and, because there were no trolleys we each carried the ends of two bags with another person to the exit. Once there we put our holdalls into a trailer and were given a danish chocolate bar and a bottle of water before getting on the double decker coach with the Cambridgeshire unit. We left quite soon after and had a video introducing us to the Jamboree. In it; Richard Hammond, Steven Fry, David Attenborough and (of course) Bear Grylls wished us all a great Jamboree experience!
After about 30mins, we reached our hostel (the cabin express), to find Nathalie (our CMT) waiting for us. We quickly all got off the coach and put our bags into a pile. Kev told us that we had all been assigned a room and that it was illegal to change rooms without telling the owner of the hostel. I was sharing with Tom, Mike and Sam. We quickly got our bags and went upstairs, Sam who had our room key and number went off without us so we ended up lost and it took us about 15mins to find him and our room. We were on the top floor (3) and our room was nice, if a bit small. It had two normal, single beds, one 'bunk bed' over one of the normal ones and one bed that went up over the doorway. It also had a bathroom/shower in one. After we had put our bags in the room we went down for our late dinner (it was about 11:00pm). We were given a horrible sandwich, bar, fruit and bottle of water, vacuum packed to a tray. The sandwich wasn't very nice, the fruit had gone moldy, and the bar was all soggy, we think they were made a long time in advance and not vacuum packed correctly. We then were told about what we would be doing the next day and told to be down for breakfast @ 7:30am. After that we went up to our rooms, I went into a room with Arthur, Kate, Harry, Dan and Luke where we played various card games and ran around the building after peoples shoes before going to our own rooms at about 1:00am where we watched some coverage of the tour de France and went to sleep.
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