1st Camelsdale Cubs, and assorted leaders, enjoyed one of the most awesome camps in the history of everything, on Brownsea Island, September 24th & 25th.
As we all know, this is the spiritual home of scouting, where Baden Powell held the first "experimental" camp in 1907. This year, the centenary year of Cub scouts, we brought it bang up to date with our own risky experiment - by letting the Colonel organise it.
Setting off in our borrowed mini bus at 8am we arrived in Sandbanks, giving us enough time to lower the tone of the area before catching the 15 minute ferry over to the island. Having hired tents and cooking equipment we got the VIP treatment - a trailer carried our gear to the camp site. After setting up camp and a quick lunch we explored the island with the capable guidance of the warden (Chikai's brother-in-law, that's handy!).
Back to the camp for 6pm for tea. The cubs brought their own food, a mix of dried expedition food, boil in the bag "look what we found" meals and (my favourite) Harry's "just add water and stand back while it explodes of it's own accord" meals. After tea a walk to Pottery Pier and then a wide game.
Sunday's weather turned out as lovely as Saturday, despite the stormy night. We've figured out how far our group is from Brownse, so contributed to the overcrowded scout sign post with our own "Camelsdale 100km" sign post - how appropriate for cubs centenary
After breakfast we set off Geocaching the island, which is a sort of Pokemon Go with real things. We'd bought two "travel bugs" which we're hoping to track through the Geocaching.com website. The fist one was found by Ringwood scouts that very afternoon! Anyone interested in tracking them follow these links:
https://coord.info/TB7ETRX
https://coord.info/TB7G2MG
We also tracked plenty of wildlife - deer (both stags), red squirrel, peacocks, pea hens and chick peas. Possibly the most wild and scary were our leaders - Ivor, Mark and Claire and Andy. Huge thanks to our young leaders Livvy and Sam for their help.
As we all know, this is the spiritual home of scouting, where Baden Powell held the first "experimental" camp in 1907. This year, the centenary year of Cub scouts, we brought it bang up to date with our own risky experiment - by letting the Colonel organise it.
Setting off in our borrowed mini bus at 8am we arrived in Sandbanks, giving us enough time to lower the tone of the area before catching the 15 minute ferry over to the island. Having hired tents and cooking equipment we got the VIP treatment - a trailer carried our gear to the camp site. After setting up camp and a quick lunch we explored the island with the capable guidance of the warden (Chikai's brother-in-law, that's handy!).
Back to the camp for 6pm for tea. The cubs brought their own food, a mix of dried expedition food, boil in the bag "look what we found" meals and (my favourite) Harry's "just add water and stand back while it explodes of it's own accord" meals. After tea a walk to Pottery Pier and then a wide game.
Sunday's weather turned out as lovely as Saturday, despite the stormy night. We've figured out how far our group is from Brownse, so contributed to the overcrowded scout sign post with our own "Camelsdale 100km" sign post - how appropriate for cubs centenary
After breakfast we set off Geocaching the island, which is a sort of Pokemon Go with real things. We'd bought two "travel bugs" which we're hoping to track through the Geocaching.com website. The fist one was found by Ringwood scouts that very afternoon! Anyone interested in tracking them follow these links:
https://coord.info/TB7ETRX
https://coord.info/TB7G2MG
We also tracked plenty of wildlife - deer (both stags), red squirrel, peacocks, pea hens and chick peas. Possibly the most wild and scary were our leaders - Ivor, Mark and Claire and Andy. Huge thanks to our young leaders Livvy and Sam for their help.