Gap Year in Great Britain & Northern Ireland > Reviews (5)

I worked on a summer camp in the Brecon Beacons for 5 months this year, so I thought I would put down my experiences. After college and A Levels I took a gap year for several reasons:

• I wanted to earn some money!
• I wanted a break from studying
• I needed more time to decide what course I wanted to do
• I wanted to travel
  The travelling never happened, for various reasons. No one else wanted to travel with me (boo hoo!) and I moved in with my boyfriend, meaning not only did I not want to leave him behind, but I had no money for travelling anyway! For most of my year off, I worked in rubbish jobs and was fairly miserable about it all. I applied for a job on a summer camp as it offered accomodation and food as well as a weekly wage. Ok, it was away from home, but only 2 hours drive and I thought it would be a good experience. So one Sunday this April, I packed up and drove off to what was to me new home, a soggy tent....

Lots of young people go to work on summer camps, either here or abroad. I'm warning you-it's not as good as it sounds. I think the companies take advantage of young people who want to experience something new, or "escape from the rat race". Low pay, long hours and hard work. It comes with the job. It's not all bad though. *** My Job ***
I was employed as a kitchen assistant. Not very exciting, but I didn't have experience with children to be a group leader. The pay was £60 a week, including food and accomodation (which I will discuss later!) It was supposed to be 42 hours a week, including 1 night duty and 1 ents (I'll explain later) but very often exceeded 60 hours, which is a joke. The job consisted of setting up the tables, helping prepare the meals, serving the meals and cleaning up. It was immensely soul destroying and at times I felt that the other staff looked down on the kitchen workers, which really annoyed me. The training wasn't very good, although we had to do a food hygeine test. We had to wear a gross uniform which was far too hot in the summer. I would not recommend this job to anyone, but I suppose if you only want a short term thing it wouldn't be too bad. It also depends on who is working with you. I found that many people started working in the kitchen and subsequently left becase of the poor conditions. I often had to do disgusting jobs such as cleaning the deep fat fryers. That involves sticking your arm into dirty oil that goes up to your shoulder. Uuuuuurrr, it makes me feel sick remembering it. The kitchen was seriously understaffed and no-one seemed to care. One time I was sick in the middle of a shift and I told the chef and he just sent me back into the kitchen. If someone has been sick they are not supposed to enter a kitchen for at least 24 hours.

*** Living Conditions ***
As mentioned before, my pay included food and accommodation. The accommodation was a small tent with a metal framed bed and a thin foam mattress. Hardly sufficient in April. I don't need to tell you that it was freezing. The staff tents were all together, in an unlit area of the camp, about half a mile from the toilet block.

Now, living in a tent in summer may not be too bad, but in spring it is terrible. It gets dark so early so unless you want to be in the staff room you have to use torches. You also had to get dressed every time you needed the loo in the night. The toilet block was a small portacabin with 1 toilet and 2 showers for 30 female staff. It was always flooded and smelly. Once it was the summer holidays though, we were allowed to use the teachers showers. Okay, onto the food. I wouldn't say I'm a fussy eater, but I don't eat red meat and I like to have some nutrition in my meals. Now, working in the kitchen I saw where all the food came from and how it was cooked and it was not very appetising. Deep fried everything, from fish fingers to spring rolls. Rarely any vegetables. The one good thing about working in the kitchen was that we were allowed as much fruit as we wanted. I suppose the food is ok for the kids who come on the holidays as it's only for a week and they want junk (chips every day), but for the staff who have to live there it was not up to scratch.

*** The camp itself ****
The camp would be a great place to go as a kid. All the kids and teachers (in school terms) stay in tents for 4 people. Unlike staff tents, the kids tents have solid concrete floors and they close properly. There are loads of activities they can do there, on land activities such as motorsports, abseiling, climbing, zip wire and archery. There was another centre nearby which did watersports on a huge lake. All the groups seemed to enjoy themselves, it's just different from the staff perspective.
There was a small village nearby, with a shop and 3 pubs. On your day off (1 a week) you could go to Brecon on the bus, where there are shops and a cinema. I had my bike with me and cycled to Hay-on-Wye, the village of books, which was really pretty. I also went to Hereford on one of my days off. Considering that some summer camps are in totally remote areas, the camp I was at was in a good location.
There were 60 staff working there-group leaders, instructors, kitchen workers, cleaners and others. You have to be 18 to work on most summer camps, but to be honest I don't think they are too fussy about who works there. Not many people are willing to give up thwir life at home to go and live somewhere remote with people they don't know.

*** Good points ***
It wasn't all terrible. There was the opportunity on the camp to take part in the activities. This was usually to help a new instructor with their training, so you were a guinea pig. I enjoyed this, and managed to do abseiling, zip wire, trapeze and canoeing. The canoeing on the lake was great. Due to the staff all being young, there was a good atmosphere, although I found some people to be quite cliquey. There were lots of parties and people went to the pub together. There were also quite a lot of trips organised, including one to the rugby in Cardiff, shopping trips and one to Brecon Jazz. The Brecon Jazz festival was a great night, there were live bands in the street and loads of stalls and the streets were packed.

I really got to love the area, as a city girl, it was amazing to wake up at dawn to bird song, and to sleep at night to complete silence (other than drunken staff stumbling to bed). It was a beautiful area, the camp was surrounded by hills, which unfortunately were closed due to foot and mouth.

Okay, that's it, you'll be glad to hear. There's a lot more I could say. I hope I haven't totally put off anyone who is thinking about going to work on a summer camp. Remember, they are all different, you have to find one that suits you. There are camps of varying size, with different age children, and in different locations. I think the most important factor as to whether you will enjoy the experience is the job you are doing. I hated the job, therefore I was tired and didn't enjoy myself so much.

If you are interested, here are some useful web sites:
www.pgl.co.uk
www.campamerica.com
www.bunac.com
www.gapyear.com

I would be really interested to see comments from anyone elses experiences of this kind of work.