Thanks to the addition of three new girl Scouts who had recently moved up from Cubs, June Camp 2015 at Spennithorne was the first camp where there were more girl Scouts than boys. The campers met, as usual, at the Den on Friday evening and packed the van before setting off to the site where they have been camping most Junes since 2002.
There were three Scout kitchens which were led by Ben, Holly and Patrick (with Liam acting as a camp consultant as he was the only Senior). The ground at the camp was extremely hard thus difficult to penetrate with the spades to dig pits. Despite this, kitchens were successfully set up and wood collecting along the river Ure commenced. Whilst searching for wood, Scouts came across a dead bird which they immediately felt the need to investigate more closely with spades.
Scouts were sent to bed shortly after sunset however, much to the annoyance of leaders who wanted to sleep, they talked late into the night. Just before midnight, a bunch of Scouts were spotted wandering around the campsite claiming that they couldn’t sleep so they had decided to get redressed and go for a walk! Once caught, they were sent straight back to bed and told to attempt not talking as a method of drifting off to sleep.
Scouts crawled out of their sleeping bags on Saturday morning and tucked into bacon sandwiches before packing a bag with their lunch in and setting off on a 6.5 mile hike. During the hike, they took it in turns holding the map so they could practice their map reading skills. The weather was so glorious on Saturday, the group took a prolonged lunch so Scouts could paddle in the water to cool down.
Although almost all the Scouts returned from their hike exhausted and with pink faces, that didn’t stop them from playing football in their free time before tea.
For tea there were a ton burgers and sausages which were cooked on the barbecue. After they’d had their portion, Scouts could return for seconds, thirds and some even fourths. Despite their greediness, there was still food left over at the end! Following the burgers, Scouts were given a chocolate biscuit to finish off with which Liam compared himself to since he had been deserted by fellow Senior Maverick who pulled out of camp only a few days before.
On Saturday evening, everyone in camp gathered around the campfire for a hybrid X-Fire/Campfire with a mix of traditional camping songs and modern hits. At first, some of the new Scouts were mortified by the loud, out of tune singing (95% of which was coming from Mark), but it wasn’t long until they were ardently belting out Hey Jude, In the Jungle, The Great American Railway and Music Man with everyone else. Holly, Holly and Caitlin even debuted their new song about biscuits and chicken nuggets…
On Sunday morning, Scouts discovered something very strange had happened to the middle kitchen overnight: Patrick had presumably turned into a spider because a web of sisal had been woven through shovels, watercarriers and kitchen posts making the kitchen almost inaccessible. He had also stolen the billies from all three kitchens and wrote his name out of them — consequently dobbing himself in. The mess was hastily cleared away by Ethan, Matthew and Kieran suspiciously without fuss early that morning. Were they trying to cover for Patrick’s arachnid tendencies? And might spider-Pat make a return at Summer Camp? If he does, read it first in the 8th Mag.
For breakfast there was eggy bread and beans which was followed by an informal inspection to ensure high camping standards were being retained. Then they got some free time.
Scouts hadn’t only been creating food related tunes at June Camp, they also created a new game which entailed squatting down and grasping on to the grass on the hill as tight as they could then leaning back as far as they could before the grass tore and they fell down the hill backwards narrowly avoiding thistly injuries.
Throughout the morning, Scouts also completed badge work with some of them learning about the country code with Erika whilst another group were tested on their knowledge of British wildlife.
Reflecting on their first weekend camp, Nicole and Annabelle (ex-Tuesday night Cubs) were quoted saying: “It’s alright”. If that verdict doesn’t class a camp as a success — what does?
