The big day was finally upon me and i woke up in the morning after a restless nights sleep feeling exhausted , worried, anxious the lot but i was also very excited to get stuck n at Raleigh. the day went very quickly and before i knew it i was saying goodbye to my girlfriend Sam and making my way to Plymouth train station where the RN coach was waiting for us. We got on the coach and crossed the torpoint ferry where about 6-8 of us sat in one of the sitting areas just slowly getting to know each other etc. finally we got off the other side of the ferry and waited for about 20 mins for the other coach from Raleigh to pick us up. We stood there having a tab or two and yapping away telling each other where we came from, our old jobs etc. it was a very sunny day and a few people where wearing suits and were complaining about the temperature , finally the coach arrived and we all set off to HMS Raleigh the coach was so quiet on the way it was a very lonely , short journey as everyone was in their own little world as we approached the main gates, seeing the armed guards and the statue of sir Walter Raleigh himself. We got off the coach and collected our bags . We then took them to the rec room in Ganges block (Fisgard division) where all the new entries meet on the first night. There where two tables with name badges on them, one table had green (starboard) badges on , the other had red (port). i found my badge which was green then looked around the room as i noticed the green/red divide in the room. i recognised a few people from my acquaint course there as well.
After a bit of chatter between our new entry we where in and out of the smoking area as often as possible to get as many tabs down us as possible as we didn't know when the next stand easy would be. Finally after a couple hours the chief petty officer came in and introduced herself and pointed to the whiteboard explaining to us that we where fisgard 12 entry port and starboard. This was quite lucky really as we were already in our own division and only had to take our civvy bags up to the next floor instead of walking around the base !
Next it was off for a late meal in traf galley and i remember saying to someone - "at least the food is good here" how wrong i was....
We went back to the mess deck which was on the 2nd floor of the block. my mess was lane mess and my bed was in the first gulch. We all started ruffling through the kit bags at the end of our beds and trying it on with big grins on our faces - the first time we had worn the official royal navy no.4 uniform .
Pipe down was at 22:30 and i never slept a wink .....
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