Ark Galashiels Spook Out group

 

Speak Out Worker Layla tells us what the group organised for Halloween.

 

This month's Speak Out meeting was about all things Halloween.

Members discussed how they could take part in local events. We started researching what was on via social media and Google.

Our search returned lots of exciting things to do: pumpkin picking at St Abb's, Lilliardsedge Holiday Park, and a Ghost trail at Floors castle.

 

One of our elderly members preferred to spend her Halloween at home and was host to an excellent party with staff.

Christine has always been a huge fan of Halloween and was keen to get the decorations up. Christine’s home was a Spooktacular Witches Cave two weeks before Halloween as Christine likes to make the most of seeing her decorations.

Christine suggested we have a Halloween High tea.  Support worker Maureen baked and decorated cupcakes with Christine and they put on a lovely spread for High Tea.

Christine had her Halloween witches outfit hanging up ready to wear from the beginning of October but there was only one day she would wear it! Staff asked if she would like to dress up on the Saturday to which Christine replied: “Layla, it's not Halloween until tomorrow”. Staff found this funny since we had been weaving in and out of Halloween decorations for almost a whole month while supporting!

Christine certainly looked the part and had a lovely day. 

The rest of the group members picked up pumpkins for Christine and we ran a competition between staff for the best. Christine chose the winner.

 

Our first outing was with Karen and Sandra who had chosen to go to Lilliardsedge Pumpkin patch. Sandra liked the idea of having a shot on the tractor as she had seen this in photos on the internet. Karen also was keen to do this.

On our arrival, there was plenty to see and do. We had to find all the featured Halloween things, which included scarecrows, skeletons,  a huge creepy spider, and much more.

The idea was to take photographs at each place and enter a photo competition.

We had great fun posing for silly photos by trying to balance pumpkins on our heads, pulling funny faces, selfies with the scarecrows, and a certain staff member jumping in the wheelbarrow for a photo.

Karen and Sandra thought this was hilarious.

After all the fun we picked our pumpkins and headed for a cosy hot chocolate with all the trimmings.

 

Our second outing was St Abb’s Pumpkin Patch with Angela and Gemma and was also Gemma’s birthday.

This patch was the real deal as the pumpkin patch had been grown from scratch and there were many different kinds.

Angela had her eyes on what must have been the biggest pumpkin in the whole field, none the less we took it, and was a great laugh trying to get it back to the car.

At the top of the field stood a tractor that fired the pumpkins far into the sky. We were not sure what it was called so we called it the Pumpkin Blaster.

Gemma got to push the control button on the farmer's command to fire the pumpkin into the sky.

We picked some great pumpkins and were looking forward to decorating them. Angela and Gemma bought St Abb’s Pumpkin patch hats and we proceeded with our adventure with a scenic walk to Coldingham Bay, followed by fish and chips at Eyemouth Harbour.

 

Floors Castle certainly did not disappoint either and this time Jameila, one of our new members, had a great time uncovering pumpkins with letters on them to spell out a spooky Halloween word.

The grounds were full of scary Halloween decorations including graveyard scenes,  ghosts and ghouls in the forest, skeletons cutting grass and having a barbecue!

The whole grounds were superb.

Jameila was straight on the case for the puzzle throughout the grounds and found the skeleton having a barbecue really funny.

 

 

 

Speak Out Workers are support workers who take on the role to organise and facilitate local meetings and activities for the people in their service.

In the Speak Out groups, people are actively supported to understand and exercise their citizenship rights.

For more information, contact Ark Participation Officer at our Head Office.

 

 

Photo by Bekir Dönmez on Unsplash