Katharine Smith – författare

In 1965, Alan Scriven's life was changed forever by ten days in the Shropshire hills.

The Longmynd Adventure Camp was set up in the 1950s by Shropshire policeman Bill Williams, to provide a small group of boys from the poorer areas of the industrialised West Midlands with fun, adventure, and experience of the countryside.

Alan Scriven was one such boy and his first experience of Camp in 1965 changed his life. He went on to volunteer at the Longmynd Adventure Camp, forming a lifelong bond with Bill and eventually taking the role of ‘Skipper’ himself.

In recounting the history of the Camp, Alan provides a thoughtful and evocative account of his own experiences, as a boy and an adult. His passion and generosity are evident throughout, as is his sense of fun.

Sadness and disappointment sit alongside laughs and it is easy to see how much this Camp meant to so many and what an experience it must have been for the boys, some of whom had never seen the sea before their day at the seaside (a regular feature of each ten-day Camp).

This is the story of a wonderful act of generosity which developed year on year, with the Camp eventually purchasing its own land becoming a registered charity.

As the years progressed, however, rules and regulations were becoming tighter and sadly the Longmynd Adventure Camp, staffed entirely by volunteers, found itself on an unavoidable collision course.

Everyone needs to feel they fit in somewhere, and Stasia hadn’t found that place yet. Nobody is more surprised than her to find it in a world of goblins, trolls and faeries, and that some of them would become her best friends.

Through danger at the waterfall, tragedy at a funeral and getting trapped in a burning building, Stasia has her new friends by her side. But when her mum is being held hostage by gangster goblins, she knows that she is the only one who can save her.