Author: Simon Williams

St. George’s day is almost here again (just a week away).

Here’s hoping for great weather as it was today (17/04) for out Scouting parade in Christchurch

We held out annual site open day and AGM today – the weather held and – although chilly at times – it was a great success.

Thanks to all those who helped to prepare the activities and food – and also to the large number of parents and children who turned up.

Particular mention goes to the Explorers who managed to get the cargo net up – it was *really* popular!

We had a food stand at the beer festival last Saturday selling steak wraps, vegetarian wraps and traditional pancakes.

With the help of a lot of volunteers – we managed to make over £480 once costs were taken into account.

Thanks to everyone who helped – and bought our pancakes and steak wraps!

2014 is the first year that the Scouts decided to have a pancake stall at the Bransgore beer festival.

Huge thanks to:

• Gill for cooking all afternoon and mentoring me throughout – it was only supposed to be a single shift.
• Simon for also standing there all afternoon taking money, serving and mixing more batter.
• Crispin for the advice and planning leading up to today (though the jury is undecided on the number of eggs that should be in a batter mix) and also for the effort throughout the afternoon.
• Kevin for being the apprentice (he passed the test)
• …and everyone else for buying them of course!

Despite it being a new fund raising event, the team managed to raise over £170 after taking into account all of the costs.

We promise to be back in 2015 –  hope to see everyone their enjoying festival and buying our pancakes of course 🙂

Scout leaders and helpers braved nature at its most languid during a recent camping weekend.

Minus the Cubs and Scouts, the grown children kicked back and played with the toys usually reserved for younger members.

Messing about with rickety crates and trying not to fatally injure one another with weaponry highlighted Saturday’s affairs, followed by some surprisingly practical skills in helping the construction of new decking at Bragger’s wood.

Night

The evening’s agenda involved horrible lethargy on the home-cooking front following a unanimous decision to buy take-aways rather than wait for the more traditional camp fire food.

The sensible approach of alcohol consumption around a raging fire rounded off the evening’s health-and-safety-abandoning fun (rumours of Mike getting an After Eight mint down his face are absolutely true), before the leaders totally wussed out and slept inside for the night. All except for Simon, who claims to have chosen to sleep in his £20 tent, but was probably kicked out of the comfy room for creating suspicious odours.

Sunday

A cooked breakfast failed to poison all concerned the following morning, thanks to Cheryl and Kevin’s culinary prowess.

Once HQ was put back to rights, everyone was split into teams to do a “Scavenger Hunt”. The videos advertising the HQ were particularly good but sadly all have been lost….

Closing off with “Scout’s own”, everyone retired back to their normal Sunday routine.

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