When I came to the RGS five years ago from a boarding school environment, I was struck by how much school activity there was in the holidays and how enthusiastically our boys signed up for camps, treks and expeditions of all kinds. During those five years, some of my most vivid memories or school life are moments on top of a misty hill in the Yorkshire Dales with the CCF or in a scout sailing boat on the Norfolk Broods or of a breakfast with the Duke of Edinburgh group in a Surrey meadow Day boys place a particular value on holiday excursions and I am grateful to the staff at the RGS for their wholehearted commitment to organising, accompanying and leading these trips. I look forward to visiting our summer camps again this year: Outdoor education has an important part to play in the rounded development of young people.
If you think everybody connected with RGS is about to spend a few weeks lazing on a tropical beach or catching up on back episodes of the X Files or constructing a scale model of the Empire State Building from used match sticks, then think again. As always the summer holidays will see a wide variety of events involving RGS boys and staff. In addition to the annual CCF camp at Sennybridge and Scout summer camp on Exmoor, our 1st Xl cricket squad, led by Steve Shore, will be travelling to Worcester in the last week of term for the Royal Grammar Schools' Cricket Festival which was inaugurated in 1986 to coincide with opening of Bradstone Brook, where they will face stiff competition from our Newcastle, High Wycombe and Worcester namesakes. There are no less than four shooting matches during July, and Venture Scout leader Dai Cowx will be leading a climbing and mountaineering expedition to the Dolomites. The intrepid group will be based in Cortina d'Ampezzo and will be scaling 10,000ft peaks using the via ferrata system of metal wires and ladders embedded in the rock. There are also two sailing trips on the horizon. Richard Mant, Tony Dubois and OG James Ferguson are taking 17 boys on a Scout camp on the Norfolk Broads in July where they will sail 18-20ft half- decked yachts. And Roger Nicholson, Roger Meadowcroft and former RGS teacher Nick Somerville are taking 23 2nd Form boys in conjunction with girls from Guildford High School, to La Reserve, a lake in Brittany, where they hope to pass their RYA Level I qualifications. On the cultural front, RGS Music Department will be travelling to La Rochelle on August 25 with the 45-strong Chamber Orchestra and Chorale (including some girls form GHS and Tormead), where they will perform three concerts in local churches. Schubert's 5th Symphony will be in the repertoire (1997 being the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth), as will the Vivaldi Gloria. At Easter no less than 82 RGS boys and 7 staff went on an ambitious classics trip to Italy organised by Alex Wilson, where they visited Pompeii and Herculaneum, climbed Vesuvius and saw the major finds housed in Naples museum. The trips to the former Greek colonies of Cumae and Paestum which became Roman towns, to Oplontis (home of Nero's mistress Poppaea), to Capri (latterly home to the somewhat less exotic Gracie Fields) and to the semi volcanic and evil-smelling crater of Solfatara all proved very popular, especially with Head of Chemistry Dai Jones, who claimed that it was like being in the middle of a giant chemistry experiment.
Last updated on 3rd Sept 1997 by The RGS Web Site Team