Family Camp : Your Suggestions Please

Planning a programme for a Thursday night can be quite an intense experience. We sit down before the start of term and map out what we will do each week. Sometimes an entire programme for the night suggests itself and on other occasions all we have is a title which needs a lot of work: I'm thinking of that murder mystery night in particular. Somehow we regularly find ourselves working up to the last minute to get things right.

And that is for a 90 minute session on a Thursday evening - imagine having a 3 day camp to plan for.

So here is where you come in.

We have one whole day to fill with activities and I would like your suggestions. So far the list of confirmed activities is: Orienteering, shooting, camp cooking, making boats and rockets, Kubb, string trail and toilet cleaning. We will have around 70 participants so we need more ideas.

Please chip in by e-mailing your ideas to us for consideration.

Ta for your time.

Ali's Birthday Walk: Review

I'm sure one of our Scouts or Explorers will be along shortly to review the day (and night) in full, but I thought I should make a quick post to say thanks to everyone for coming along. Despite the fact that I now walk like a 90 year-old war veteran with one leg, I did enjoy the walking and the sitting round the fire and the sleeping in a freezing cold tent. It's never to cold to camp - maybe we should have a proper winter camp outdoors next year. Anyone? Anyone?

Some pics of our progress were being uploaded as we went along and can be found on Twitter. A few of them had to uploaded at home due to phone signal restrictions, so don't worry - we didn't walk for 24 hours or anything as cruel as that.

I'm off to start planning the walk for 28th.

Ali's birthday walk

Hope everyone is raring to go for our small jaunt over the Hambleton Hills. When I say hills I mean more, well, flat.

It is not a hilly walk, but a challenge. 14km is a reasonable distance to cover in 5 hours, but best of all we are passing a geocache along the way! See here for information on geocaching.

The weather forecast is generally dry, bit of drizzle and some sun with gusty winds, temperatures topping 10 degrees. Keep up to date with the weather for that region here

We'll be expecting everyone to have a turn at navigating the route, so pack your maps and route cards.

I'll be packing the 'can' for the evenings entertainment. I do expect the level of stealth to move up a degree or too as we are without the torch wielding and clod stomping fraternity. Which means of course, the Leaders will have to pick up the game a notch too! You up for that?? mwwwahhhaaa ha ha ha!!! [laughter of evil tyrant]

Get packing!

The Big Adventure

Whoaaaaa......... I've just had an email regards this years Big Adventure (you may know it as Family Camp).

We have a shade short of 90 people attending!

This is really good news that we can encourage so many parents to become actively involved with our Scout Group and spend a few nights under canvas to see what we get up to.

The Leadership team at Barton now have the prospect of feeding, entertaining and exhausting people for 4 days! A challenge me thinks!

Great news for all those uniformed persons (yes thats you who does go to scouts/cubs/beavers), we get to wear a badge!! Whoo hoo, another badge to sew on mum!!

Young Leaders

Gavin and I returned from an informative update from the District Leaders meeting regards Young Leader and Explorer training. It's pretty much what we already knew but I thought I'd jot down a few pointers for our Young Leaders who are actively involved in our sections.

All Young Leaders should complete module A when starting as a Young leader within 3 months! We are addressing this aspect as we speak and hope to have you all up to speed next term.

Once you have completed this training (2 hours) then there are four 'missions' you can carry out in the section in which you help.

Mission 1 - Plan and run 3 indoor meetings for the section. Most of you are already doing this, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Mission 2 - Plan and run 3 outdoor activities (record any badge work covered). Again this isn't to much of a problem as we have Kiplin!

Mission 3 - Plan and run 3 section forums. We haven't done this as yet with YL's, so that's exciting!

Mission 4 - Take responsibility for part of the organisation and running of the section. When we get to this point you'll be fighting us off!

Each of these missions should be fun and give a huge sense of achievement!

Each mission is recognised with a 'bar' that surrounds the YL badge.

The leadership team are now actively getting this structure into place so that YOU can accomplish your missions! (should you choose to accept, bear in mind this blog may self destruct in 5 seconds.......4........3........2.......1........phizzzzz..parp...thruurp...pop.)