We arrived on Saturday nice and early at 9.00 am to beautiful views and the sun shining, a lovely change! Fourteen gymnasts stayed overnight along with coaches Linda, Syl and Pauline. After rooms, beds and numerous fluffy toys were organised we joined the other 14 gymnasts who were not staying overnight along with coaches Scott, Laura and Katherine and headed for the gymnastics hall. Fabulous venue! Sprung floor, pits, vault runs, 4 beams, everything we could want. Everyone worked hard all morning learning new skills and improving old ones.

Meals were provided in the restaurant in the main building with a great variety of quality home cooked food from the buffet to choose from. The children, unable to resist tried hard to fit most of everything on offer onto overflowing trays. The problem was that most of the younger ones could not carry the food trays to the tables, especially while balancing plastic cups filled to the brim with drinks! The coaches came to the rescue and ferried umpteen trays to tables rather than have the inevitable mess to clean. Luckily it is fact that coaches only need 15 minutes max for meals!

The afternoon included a ballet and dance lesson courtesy of Shirley Jamison, the boys making a gallant effort to join in and on the whole, looking pretty good. A demanding conditioning session followed which could have been conceived as the coaches ensuring all slept well that night. As if we would!

Saturday night was spent in the lounge area where coaches along with the resident staff were treated to some karaoke singing with a variety of soloists and duets belting out their numbers with renewed energy. An eating frenzy seemed to follow with copious amounts of snacks appearing from nowhere, in particular an abundance of Pringles! (David). PJ’s on and a “quiet” game of charades was organised to wind down, or so we thought, apparently you have to shout the answers at a high pitch for the game to be any good!

Tongue in cheek the coaches suggested we should all have an early night and be in bed by 9.30 with lights out at 10.00? To our delight gymnasts and coaches were settled quietly and in correct beds/rooms by 10.30. Did we mention they are all little angels?

Next morning most were up and raring to go by 7am. Breakfast and packing done we headed back to the gym, suitably smug after a good night’s rest. Various rotations on bars, beam, floor and trampoline filled the morning followed by a session on the popular air track where again some new tumbles were achieved. We finished off our day with a ballet/dance class and Scott in particular excelled at this, much to the amusement of everyone else.

A big thank you to all Inverclyde staff who were most helpful and pleasant. We had a lovely weekend which proved beneficial to all who attended and we hope to return again next year.