Our first week at Raleigh has really flown by.

We arrived on Sunday 9 March, after a seven hour train journey from Blackburn and met up with some other new recruits at Plymouth station for the trip across the River Tamar to Raleigh.

We are in Drake Division, which will be our home during our nine weeks training course.

We've been separated into different classes - Nick in Starboard and Adam in Port.

It was a bit weird being in different classes at first, although we see each other quite a lot as the two classes spend a lot of time training together.

We each have a Petty Officer instructor who will look after us throughout the course.

There are 31 recruits in each class, who come from all over this country and there are also some recruits from the Commonwealth.

It's a mixed class, with two girls in Starboard and three in Port.

While the average age is around 20, there are a few 16-year-olds and some older lads in their 30s.

All the lads are accommodated in two messes - one for Port, one for Starboard - while the girls have their own mess in another block.

In our mess decks we each have a bed and a small locker.

It represents what it will be like when we are on a ship.

We've both made a few mates already.

This week has really been about settling in and at first it was it real culture shock what with the discipline and everything being so structured.

It's good though because it really makes the class come together as a team, which is what it's all about.

Surprisingly everything felt normal really quickly.

We had to sign on on Monday and as we are going to be Divers we had to have an extra medical, which fortunately we passed.

We've been issued with our kit and have been getting instruction on how to wear it and how to keep it clean and ironed.

It was great putting on our uniform for the first time because you do feel a bit out of place walking round in civvy clothes.

Thursday was our 18th birthday and we spent the day marching around - you have to march as a squad wherever you go - ironing and polishing our boots.

We've also had our 2.4km run this week. As Divers we had to complete the distance in 10 minutes and 30 seconds, which we both did - Nick in 9 minutes 38 seconds, Adam in 9 minutes 41 seconds, and that was in the Hurricane weather we had on the south coast on Tuesday.

However the highlight of the week for us was getting in the pool for the Military Swimming Test.

We had to jump in the pool wearing overalls, tread water for two minutes and then swim 40 metres.

At the end we were given the option of jumping off the high board.

It was a taster to sea survival training when jumping off the high board simulates jumping off the side of a ship if the worst happens at sea.

It was pretty good fun to be honest, and it was something we had already done during our pre-entry diving test at Horsea Island in November.

Our first week is Raleigh's final week of term and we all now have two weeks off for Easter.

Whereas the majority of people here are really looking forward to their time off, we would have rather ploughed on.

However we will be keeping our physical training up while we are at home and are looking forward to getting back to Raleigh to continue our training at the end of March.