I was employed with the "Buffers party" at HMS Collingwood, this meant that every morning I would be in charge of a group of people and we would sweep the road following a different route Monday to Friday. This route would inevitably end at the NAAFI, usually about 10 minutes after we started sweeping.We would then spend most of the morning in the NAAFI before sweeping our way back to the Buffers store for a hard earned cup of tea. On other days we would sweep our way to the sports field and play football for a couple of hours.
That was about it really, the only time it got busy was preparing for "field gun" day which was basically like settng up a garden fete only on a much larger scaleit was possibly the most boring time I have had in the Royal Navy, the only good thing was that it was only about 3 miles from home. But it wasn't long before I was back at sea again.
HMS Collingwood is the Royal Navy's largest training establishment.
Collingwood took over from HMS Dryad in the training of the warfare branch of the Royal Navy