We arrived at Lihou car park at noon, which despite being overcast in the morning, was completely full. After abandoning the cars further down the road we walked back to the car park to find Pat waiting with his mountain of food. It was more than enough food to feed a small army for 24 hours. Even now, three days later, we're still eating the leftovers.
The first part of the team, me (Andy), Heather, Pat, Russ, and Jon were gathered. We were the 'overnighters' and would be staying on Lihou for around 24 hours.
After a couple of minutes later a tractor drove up from the causeway. The driver introduced himself as Richard, the warden. He gave us some quick instructions, helped us load the food mountain on to the tractor, and raced back across to Lihou. When the rest of the Lihou team arrived (Alicia), we we made our way across the causeway. A few hops, skips, and jumps later we were on Lihou with minimal foot wetness.
We went strait to the house where Richard gave us our introduction to Lihou and the safety briefing. There was a quick but yummy lunch and then on to the activities. To our surprise the sun had just come out and the day quickly got warmer. We were very lucky with the weather.
The first activity was archery. I always enjoy archery, but this was even more fun that usual because we were split in to teams for some games. In the first game you have two teams. One team has to get points using basic scoring – a shot in the middle is 10 points, each ring out is 1 point less. The first team keeps shooting and getting points until the other team has to complete a simple but surprisingly tricky task. The second team needed to get an arrow in each of the coloured ring, but they needed to do it in order from outer to inner. It's surprisingly difficult because you can't just aim for the middle.
The second archery game was using targets like a dart board. It's basically darts with arrows. Richard also brought out his personal bow, which was considerably stronger that the other bows. I can't remember how strong the weaker bows were, but it felt twice as difficult to pull back. Firing faster arrows didn't seem to help much because we were quite close to the targets, but the way that your arm shakes when you're trying to hold that much weight is a huge disadvantage so nobody used that bow for long.
Half a cup of tea later and it was time for Alicia to get back across the causeway... well actually the correct time to cross had been about 10 minutes earlier so she she took an impromptu dip in the sea. I think her phone may have been a casualty.
The causeway was quickly swallowed by the sea. In just a few minutes Lihou and Guernsey had become completely separate islands. We were now alone on Lihou.
The next activity was abseiling.
The only person that had done this before was Pat, but it was a long time ago and he was a bit sketchy on the details. Essentially we were all beginners, except Richard of course. He seemed to know what he was doing. It wasn't long before we were kitted up and walking backwards off a cliff.
Abseiling was great. Walking was a bit awkward, but once you start jumping and getting more confident with your rate of descent then you can make some pretty big leaps down the cliff. I couldn’t wait to do it again. I managed to go twice before the sea closed in. The thing that surprised me the most was how hot some of the equipment got. The main piece in contact with your main rope is a figure of 8 shaped piece of metal and it can get too hot to touch if you're moving quickly.
Richard gave a quick tour of the rest of the islands and some of the outbuildings before he kayaked his way back to Guernsey. It was now just the overnighters left on the island. Party time.
A quick round of frisbee later and the BBQ was well on its way. There was more meat that we could eat and more alcohol than we could drink but we did our best. Once we were in suitably silly moods we started trying to build rock pillars on the beach, a bit of juggling, and sat watching the last hint of red disappear from the horizon.
Later in the evening was dominated by board games & card games complete with a bit of confusion of the rules and a lot of laughs.
The morning was overcast and windy. It had rained during the night, but we were safe and warm in the house. We spent most of the morning in the conservatory, watching the birds with a cup of tea. We had the tea, not the birds.
The sea slowly sank away and the causeway was revealed once again, a way home. It was time to go. We cleaned up, pack up, and marched back to Guernsey.
We sat for a little bit looking back at the Lihou from the car park. It was all over so fast, but it had been a great trip. I'm looking forward to going again next year...
