Sun

Arrived on site and very quickly set about arranging a very good scout site. Each patrol has its own cooking area with fire, chopping area and dining shelter.

Mon

The Horse riding has been moved to Weds so we brought forward Rafting. The scouts thoroughly enjoyed building (and sinking) all their rafts.

Tues

Today we spent the day at Knockhatch. There are birds of prey, toboggon rides, vertical slides and a chance to demonstrate our driving skills, or not, on the Go Karts. (its OK we have now retrieved the Go Kart that one of our Scouts managed to get wedged on top of the tyres!)

Then it was off to the Sovereign Centre Swimming and finishing up with a Fish & Chip supper.

We are now playing a wide game of Bertie's in the pitch black!

Weds

Horse Riding at Ashdown Forest Riding School. We spent a fantastic hour (it seemed like 4!) meeting our horses, playing riding races on them in their riding school before going off for a short ride. I think there will be a lot of requests for horses when they return! However if they come on Summer Camp next year we are going to the New Forest......

We went off shopping for our Presentation meal tomorrow night, before visiting the Stock Car Racing for a long night of crashes and cars rolling.

Thurs

We are busy completing building an Assault course for the Cubs to do and then we have our Presentation Meals to cook before finishing with the group Camp Fire.

We are all tired but happy and looking forward to meeting you all in the car park Fri at 1pm.

Reflections Having just completed my first ever scout camp, caught up with my sleep and the mountain of washing... I can quite honestly say that, although very exhausting it was an extremely enjoyable experience.  I was very impressed with the behaviour and attitude of the scouts, who had to work hard to do almost everything for themselves, from setting up camp to cooking their own meals, and clearing away afterwards. We had two patrols on this camp who named themselves the Lumberjacks and the Simpson's. A point system was run all week and it was a very close run competition all week. The Lumberjacks gained points when they managed to successfully ride their raft to the other side of a particularly stinky pond. The Simpson's however, despite the fact that their raft looked to be more seaworthy, sank as soon as it was placed into the water. The Simpson's lost a lot of points one night for leaving their site very untidy, but regained most of those points in the Ready Steady Cook night which we held on the last night. The Simpson's menu, based on the theme of forest animals, comprised of bug salad (no real bugs...just tomatoes and sweetcorn made to look like bugs), chicken and worms (actually noodles) and hedgehog desert made from a chocolate covered apple (which would have tasted delicious if it were not for the fact that they set fire to the chocolate, which gave it an interesting smoky flavour!). They did extremely well, their only failure was that they did not plan ahead for the washing up, with no hot water and a fire which had gone out. The Lumberjacks menu, based on the theme of healthy eating, comprised of chicken ceasar salad (with cabbage!!!!), Gammon, pasta and vegetables, and a yogurt fondue. They also did extremely well, their only failure was that they did not start to cook the main meal until they had eaten their starter, which meant that the Simpson's had finished their entire meal before they had served up their main course. The overall result was that the Simpson's won the Ready Steady Cook competition, and the Lumberjacks won the points system with a lead of just one point. My big thanks must go, not only the Scouts for being a pleasure to supervise, but also to Bertie who was an inspiration to us all. Linda