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And the rains came! We awoke to the pitter patter sound of rain on out tents and were less than enthusiastic to emerge from them. Eventually we all did and were greeted by a huge quantity of porridge for breakfast. This year Steve was determined to make sure that the we had a good porridge experience and lashed out on Jordan’s Porridge Oats, these went down far better than last years cheap and cheerful ones so a definite result on the breakfast front. Lashing honey and sugar were of course added by all, just to make sure that we had enough energy for the morning’s activities.

Before starting the day’s activities the scouts were asked to help prepare their evening meal of beef stew. Each patrol was responsible for preparing their own vegetable selection and frying their onions. These were then added to the pan fried beef cubes in the mess tent along with stock. Three huge pots were brought to the boil and the scouts buried one of them in a hay box in the ground to continue to cooking slowly throughout the day.

Thankfully one of the activities scheduled was canoeing, so we were going to get wet whatever the weather. The scouts were split into two groups one would canoe on the lake and the other do the rope assault course that we had setup in the woods.

On these canoe sessions the scouts were taught the basics of paddling in a straight line, which is actually very difficult to achieve and is the reason why many of them end up paddling in a wavy line or in some cases round in circles. Most found learning to turn easy although stopping was a little more tricky.

 

Monday

Scouts had to negotiate rope walkways between the trees around the camp site

Learning to paddle on Lake Windermere

Meal times were a social experience. This was actually the Sunday meal of chicken curry and rice which scouts cooked themselves in their patrols.


The first group to do the rope course had a rather eventful time. The aerial runway which had been tested by Rob the night before was long, steep and very wet! Our fist candidate leaped onto the tyre seat and launched himself down the hill at full speed. Unfortunately it took two of our leaders on the break rope to stop him impaling himself on the very large tree to which the bottom of the runway had been tied. This involved a lot of heel digging, some bottom sliding and some rather interesting linguistic comments! Needless to say the runway was then out of bounds until it had received some minor modifications because of the wet weather conditions. After once again sending one of the leaders down it the same scout agreed to go down a second time to test it, patrol points were awarded for ‘bravery beyond the call of duty for this’. The remainder of the rope course consisted of walkways which scouts negotiate using their own initiative.

We returned to camp wet and tired so everyone was pleased to find tea ready and waiting for them. A quick 12 pint batch of custard went with the remaining mandarin oranges and some pineapple chunks for pudding.

The scouts however didn’t escape doing any cooking as they were asked to prepare a dough mix for breakfast the following morning. For many this was their first experience of bread making.

As we were all now getting tired because of the higher than normal activity level during the day, we had no problem settling for bed at around 10pm and after ‘lights out’ all went very quiet very quickly!