A year in the life of 1st Purley Scouts
The past 12 months have been seen us continue with a multitude of wide ranging activities in the Scout section; still participating actively at a District and County level as well as running our own events.
Summer camp is always the highpoint of the scouting year and 2016 was no exception, we had 6 nights at Gilwell Park, the home of Scouting and a frankly superb site. There was crate stacking, zip wire, silly games, water slides, swimming, climbing, a leap of faith, freefall, raft building, wobbly pole and much more besides. We were lucky enough to have our hats blown off – literally – with a visit to the Police Helicopter base, proud to say another one of our ‘money can’t buy experiences’, though some of our fellow campers may not have been too keen on the steady stream of flyovers as the pilots were on the lookout for our tasteful bright orange tee shirts! Of course, we need to be fed, the traditional roast dinner was cooked in the oven over the fire; a great success, though the cardboard smoker for the trout didn’t quite get the desired result, something we aim to improve on in the future.
Summer camp is always the highpoint of the scouting year and 2016 was no exception, we had 6 nights at Gilwell Park, the home of Scouting and a frankly superb site. There was crate stacking, zip wire, silly games, water slides, swimming, climbing, a leap of faith, freefall, raft building, wobbly pole and much more besides. We were lucky enough to have our hats blown off – literally – with a visit to the Police Helicopter base, proud to say another one of our ‘money can’t buy experiences’, though some of our fellow campers may not have been too keen on the steady stream of flyovers as the pilots were on the lookout for our tasteful bright orange tee shirts! Of course, we need to be fed, the traditional roast dinner was cooked in the oven over the fire; a great success, though the cardboard smoker for the trout didn’t quite get the desired result, something we aim to improve on in the future.
Autumn saw our night hike at Guilford and a trip to Airhop in the morning; definitely a success.
Our winter camp event was something a little different with a trip to Heathrow for a guided tour behind the scenes – yes another one of those experiences – this formed a part of the Air Activities Badge that we completed over the rest of the weekend. The event coincided with Chinese New year, celebrated by the Scouts cooking the banquet; the chicken feet didn’t go down as well as you might expect.
Checkpoint Challenge, a District competition event held in May, saw us with three teams, coming 2nd (by onepoint!!!!!), 6th and 15th, a marvellous result from some very young Scouts. There simply isn’t space here to put all of our events and achievements, what is above is only a fraction of what goes on, just to point out some other items of news:
Just like Cubs we now have some girls in the Troop – More are always welcome! Our numbers are very healthy, with 24 Scouts on a Monday night becoming the norm.
We have awarded several Chief Scouts Gold awards, the highest award in Scouts and have good links with Explorers for our Scouts who have moved on.
Summer Camp 2017 promises to be even better than 2016, a week in the Lake District made possible with a grant from the Jack Petchey Foundation, doing things you just can’t do here in the south east with no mountains; Ghyll Scrambling looks set to be a highligh.
