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Greville Troop Whitsun Camp 2009

Adapted from Harry's parents evening speech

For those of you that don't know, Whitsun is a shortish camp of 3 days in the Secret Field at Bocketts Farm, full of big people shouting at little people (in most cases) to go and get wood. Normally rain features quite a lot but this year it was nice so the wood was dry, but we still managed to make a lot of smoke. In fact the smoke was so dense that even the minibus stank of bonfires after a minute of us being inside.

The camp is a competition using all your scouting skills and no matter how hard you try to make your camp perfect, the leaders always find something wrong!

Camp gadgets are normally to blame as most of us can't tie knots so they fall apart. Camp gadgets are things like saw horses, fences and dressers made from green wood and loosely tied together with sisal (hence the falling apart)

Among some of the activities, the home made assault course ranks highly as we spend an afternoon building sections in our patrols while the other patrols have a go on the aqua slide and build trebuchets.

As I think that most people have been on an aqua slide, I shall only give a brief description of what one is. It is basically a tarpaulin on the ground with lots of soapy water on it.

But the prior to this we did trebuchet building which are catapults that fire wet sponges, these are then fired at people on the slide, so far no one has ever been hit by one. So it turns into a massive water fight with almost no rules!

The obstacle course is full of things to climb over or under or ropes to give you burns in places you don't want.

And at the end of the evening, there is a nice campfire warble, which sounds nothing like singing!

The next day we pack up (which is no mean feat) and if its been raining then you have to pitch the tents again when we get back.

All in all it's a great camp

More pictures are avaliable on our pictures page.

24 Oct 2009