Linnet Clough
18/09/2010 - 20/09/2010
Linnet Clough was the most challenging 2.5 days of my life. Altough it was very difficult, I enjoyed every moment of it, from doing drill in the pouring rain to doing team exercises diving through mud!!
We arrived at Linnet at about 11:00am and immediately began doing fitness (mainly running) for a couple of hours, then after we had our lunch, we began doing some classroom lessons either about our night exercise ready for day two, navigation or leadership work. It was a relief to do these lessons as it gave us time to rest. At the end of our first day, we were taught how to iron our uniform and polish our boots, then we could go to bed, which was the best part of that day!
On the second day we were up at 5:00am getting our rooms clean and ready for our morning run. Many people felt like quitting on this day, mainly because it got tougher and it was raining throughout the whole day and it made everyone miserable! We had our first room inspection that morning, we was told it was average and could be made a lot better, but it wasn't the worst they had seen. However, as it became night time, everyone was a lot happier because we had our night exercise and skits. Skits was the highlight of the whole 2.5 days!! Although the group I was in didn't do very well, it was a good laugh watching everyone else's and just taking part. Each group had to perform two acts, sing a song we were given and to make up our own act.Everyone was relieved that it was now the last day, although we still had some hard work to do, we just thought of going home and everyone put max effort in. After we had our mornng run, we had to clean our room for final inspection while we went for breakfast. We had just had a full english breakfast and cereal, then we had to get changed into our fitness kit and ran for 15 minutes (but we was told we were going to run for an hour) then did an assault course. After this, we got changed into our uniform and was ready for our passing out parade. Everyone passed and to add to it, we was told that we had the best room inspection of the whole five years that had been previous.
The feeling of passing Linnet Clough is great! You have know idea of how a person who has passed feels unless you have done it yourself. You feel relieved that you passed and proud that you put your best efforts in and came out on top!!
Tips to pass Linnet Clough
- Teamwork! If you DO NOT together, you WILL fail! Check each others uniform, encourage others and just stay organised so everyone knows what they're doing.
- Good time managing! You get very little time to get changed, have showers and clean rooms.. if you can't do this, you will get abused with extra fitness.. as we nearly found out!
- Get to sleep as soon as you can! Don't stay up talking, you WILL regret it in the morning. The most amount of sleep we got was about five hours!
- Put your maximum amount of effort in! Even if you feel like stopping.. just think it's only 2.5 days! They will notice if you're not doing your best!
- Listen to everything the second years tell you! They are there to help you, not to make your time at Linnet harder. Remember that they have been there as well, so they know what to do and how to make it a little bit easier for you.
- Finally, have a sense of humor! Many people who felt really down and wanted to quit didn't have much of a sense of humor, but those of us who did made their day a lot better.. they'll thank you for it!
