School was out! After a year of teachers droning, mounds of textbooks and time-consuming, life-consuming homework, school had ended.

What got me through was envisioning being at Camp Beaumont for a whole week surfing and body-boarding the “crashing waves” in the mornings and “experiencing the exhilaration” of the zip wire as highlighted on the website, and the massive 3G swing in the afternoon, surrounded by people of the same age as me that I could easily make friends with.

I arrived at the camp on the Isle Of Wight on a Friday in July last year, via the popular and efficient Wightlink ferry which runs regularly from Lymington to Yarmouth, although Camp Beaumont do offer to pick you up and bring you home from various local points around the country. And walking through the gates on a tour of the campus it seemed like this was going to be a week I’d remember for the rest of my life.

After the tour of the facilities, my brother and I settled down in our dorm, a medium-sized room with three bunk beds and a severe lack of air conditioning as we were to find out on the first night.

From our window we could see a view of the sea and although we weren’t ‘perched’ on the cliff, we were pretty close, so could imagine ourselves catching the waves right on to the beach.

Yet on first day there wasn’t much to do because all the kids were settling in, so we got a bit bored, but that was set to change, wasn’t it?

At 7.30am my dorm members were aroused by a sleepy instructor who had obviously woken up early too many mornings in a row and after regretfully getting out of bed I wandered down to the dining hall in my zombie-like state hoping to get some delicious food into my stomach to wake me up.

I was disappointed because breakfast consisted of some rather scraggly looking bacon, soggy toast and a small fudge yoghurt (which was the highlight) followed by two cups of orange squash, hardly the breakfast of champions but then again there were 400 kids on campus so I understood certain cost-saving initiatives had to be used.

After breakfast I wandered back to my dorm to get changed into clothes for the day and I got into my group made up of around 15 people for some team bonding activities. This was when it struck me that, surprisingly, most of the people at the camp weren’t from Britain but from mainland Europe – countries such as Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Spain and France and there was even a large influx of kids from China.

It seems the English classes at the camp were more popular than I thought and although many of the foreign children spoke good English, they tended to speak to other foreigners in the mother tongue, leaving me and my brother at a social disadvantage.

But our group soon set about doing activities and the first one, the 3G swing, was a good one, whisking into the air at a terrifying pace and height, but as became the norm, the highs were followed by some time-filling lows that weren’t fun or challenging at all and although the activities were meant to be one after another, there were always 20 minute gaps between them leaving me with nothing to do but listen to conversations I didn’t understand and walk around the grounds. Hopefully water sports would be great.

It wasn’t. Firstly the “huge crashing waves” I imagined were nowhere to be seen, having been replaced by depressing ripples that you couldn’t even call waves and on the first day we had to “get used to being in the water” which means we didn’t really do anything at all so after just one and a half days I wanted to leave the camp because I was so bored. It was hard to make friends that I didn’t understand and water sports wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

I decided to persevere which kind of paid off. I made some friends in my group and water sports improved but the most exciting activity was one I made up on the last day and involved skim-boarding on my knees and the big waves made no appearance through the whole week. The activities were still too short and I felt that the instructors were rushing the activities so when I wanted another go at something they refused making up excuses that I quickly dismissed as rubbish. When it was time to go I was overjoyed and happy to leave and although I missed my friends that I had made I wouldn’t go anywhere near the camp again.

The facts:

WIGHTLINK FERRY: Alister Henderson travelled to the Isle of Wight with Wightlink on its 40-minute ferry service from Lymington to Yarmouth, one of three routes.

Car ferries also operate between Portsmouth and Fishbourne (45 minutes) and there is a foot passenger catamaran service between Portsmouth Harbour and Ryde Pier Head (approx 20 minutes). Day return fares start from £43 for a car and up to four people, while short-stay return fares (up to four nights) cost from £62. Call 0871 376 1000 or visit www.wightlink.co.uk for details.

CAMP BEAUMONT

Camp Beaumont Adventure Holidays

Mini breaks – Sat-Wed £319 Wed-Sat £239

Multi-activity Camp Sat – Sat £539

Adventure Holidays Sat – Sat from £569

Dates of Camps

Easter April 5-19, 2014 (selected centres)

May Half Term – May 24-31, 2014 (selected centres)

Summer Holidays – 29/6/2014-23/8/2014 n Online bookings and brochure request at www.campbeaumont.co.uk

Telephone bookings – 0800 655 6560

Seven Centres – Dukeshouse Wood – Northumberland Dearne Valley – South Yorkshire Pinewood Sands – Norfolk Colomendy Valley – North Wales The House! – Norfolk Grosvenor Hall – Kent The Island – Isle of Wight