A WONDERFUL and wild weekend of writing in West Devon took place at the start of June. Okehampton College ran its first Gifted and Talented English Writing Residential 'A Wild Writing Weekend' at Throwleigh Youth Hostel. Students from years 9 and 10 spent two nights at the hostel and undertook a series of writing tasks to challenge them in and out of school environment. The residential was a follow up to a successful series of gifted and talented workshops held at the college earlier on in the year and was organised by assistant faculty leader Kate Diffey. Kate said: 'Hopefully we will have some more residentials organised in the future as this one proved to be a real success. 'Students were challenged all weekend but they loved every minute — they wouldn't go to bed on Friday night as they were so engrossed in riddle making!' As well as writing riddles, the students learnt some journalism basics, created a 'crime scene' to investigate where they had to piece together a story of what happened and spent a sunny day on Dartmoor finding inspiration for poetry among the stark natural beauty of the landscape. The weekend concluded with the students' parents being treated to an evening of performance poetry and riddle solving. Year 9 student, Miranda Martyn, said: 'My favourite part was going out to collect inspiration for a poem. When we did this everyone came up with different ideas so we could use these and make them our own in our work.' Fellow year 9 student, Tom Hawkings, added: 'I liked the point when we went to the moor to gather inspiration and facts. 'We stopped by a small stream that ran by the road and came up with creative words to describe it. That was our starting point for our poems.' Students and staff at Okehampton College are hopeful that this will be the first of many residentials and the creative writing community will continue to move from strength to strength.