Scout Camp with Bear Grylls
We spent last weekend at Scout Camp down the coast a little. We spent the week leading up to it organising things and then set off with tents and camping kit straight from school on Friday afternoon, heading for a muddy field south of Newquay.
We made a quick stop at Llanrhystud for some sand for the fire bucket, another stop at Aberaeron to check the swimming pool opening times and then arrived at 6ish to a traffic jam of parents cars all dropping off their kids and kit. To be honest, we’ve been so busy lately with various preparations for trips, extra workloads and general catching up with everything that we didn’t really want to be there, but once we were, we made the most of it and got stuck in along with about 200 kids and lots of leaders.
Of course, as soon as we started putting up tents it started getting dark and started pouring with rain. There are lots of them to put up too, not just ours own, but we also need to help the Cubs and Scouts with theirs and we need to set up the mess tent, the shelter and the very complicated kitchen tent – We got there in the end though and I was soon up to my usual tactics of making sure there was always some hot water in the kettle and flasks so that we could settle down with a cup of tea.
Saturday was filled with activities. Anna and I had organised a treasure hunt so had a constant stream of children coming to us for directions and assistance, elsewhere there was circus skills, crafts, bushcraft, climbing, ‘gladiators’, zorbing, shooting, archery, radio operation and plenty of other things for them to do, along of course with mud – loads of it! I did manage to sneak out for a bit in the afternoon for some training though. A quick hilly bike ride around the local countryside and my first run in about 10 weeks – just a quick 12 minute run to test my legs and all seemed OK, albeit VERY slow. I took up my usual place in the kitchen tent much of the time, churning out food like there was no tomorrow.
But there was a tomorrow and with it came a special visitor in the form of chief scout Bear Grylls. Amid the mayhem he paid the camp a flying visit – quite literally as he arrived by helicopter, stayed for about 20 minutes and then flew off to another camp. The kids from our group got to spend quite a bit of time with him though and he even helped Morgan across a slack-line.
Here’s a video of his visit. Our camp is at 2:06 and Morgan at 2:30
I didn’t actually see him as I’d sneaked off for a run, this time a 6.5 mile hard fartlek run, followed by swim in Aberaeron Pool. It was then back to business as usual with mud and mayhem and the occasional visit to the St. Johns Ambulance. The camp culminated with all of the kids doing a muddy and very wet obstacle course that involved nets, rope swings, lakes and crawling through tunnels in a stream. They seemed to love it though as did we when we saw the look on their faces when we told them where they had to go! Before long it was time to start packing everything up and heading home. It ended up being a pretty good camp and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I think Anna and I did in the end too, although I did manage to put on nearly a stone in weight thanks to all the cake!
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sounds like a fun week-end, so glad I was at home!! although the cakes sounded fine ,I expect some of which were provided by Anna?
just watched the video It is good to see such a young Bear ( or is it because I’m so old now) lovely to see him with Morgan
I’m sure Bear is ageing at the same rate as you – unless he has discovered some secret of eternal youth that he hasn’t told anyone about.
Al.