Summer Camp 2019 Day 2

So day two dawned literally at dawn. The light was shining into the hammock at just the right angle to wake Brendan. He said it beautiful, but struggled back to sleep for a for a while until the morning run 🏃🏼‍♂️ at 7:45am. 3km in 15 mins and Adam, Donal, Alex, Jack, and Brendan was we’re back for Flag up @ 8. Flag up starts the day for everyone and we can check it that everyone is ok. It was followed by a blind auction won by the Paw Patrol who spent a whopping 14 Wexys to buy their item.

The Grumpy Hat made a “welcome” return and was awarded to Sarah for being the last person out of bed in the morning. Now there was some dispute over this, but since the majority of the scouts said Sarah, she got it.

Breakfast was a special treat of rinlgets of toasted oats oats with a playful splash of ice cold cow juice followed by sweet French bread encrusted with pebbles of finest Belgian chocolate AKA Cheerios and Brioche Rolls.

The site build continued after wash-ups were done. Each patrol had to pitch a QM tent to keep their patrol gear in. They also had to finish building their tables and build and alter fire. Boundaries were put up correctly and a monster gate was built. Each of the patrols are to be as self sufficient as possible and make sure that they eat together and work together. That is why it is so important to have a table and eat especially eat together. It allows them to bond and have a bit of craic.

Lunch was sandwiches in teh sunchine. The leaders had a lovely fresh salad with Basil, Mozerella, Balsamic Vinegar and diced peppers, onions, and tomatoes. It was so fresh and delicious on camp. It was just what the doctor ordered on such a sunny day. Lovely and refreshing. Nice one Fiona.

The sun was beating down and the scouts were starting to show the signs of it with some sun burn despite regularly applying copious amounts of sun cream. We had a game planned, so we decided to pitch up a second marquee tent (lucky we brought it Mary) so that we could offer some much needed shade from the sun. The game was trading game and Sean ran it with the help of some of the ventures and Donal. It went down very well and all of the scouts seemed to enjoy it.

Dinner was started early as it was going to take a while to peel all of the spuds needed and boil up the big billys of water needed for them. Luckliy the scouts reaslised that it would take ages for the water to boil and so put that on first before they started peeling the spuds. Oh no wait a second, no they didn't. The gas burners were moved into the marquee tent to give them shelter from the wind so that the gas was more efficient. After a while, a delicous meal of mash, with loads of cream and proper butter and Hot Dogs was served and everybody ate their fill. There was even some left over, which was offered to the venutres who cooked a big bowl of rice with some chilli.

Wash-ups took a long time to do as the scouts were not aware that they had to wash all of the billys used to prepare the meal and the sinks were blocked with food when they got there, and so waited for the dirty water to drain instead of just scooping it out. They have now learned that sometimes you just need to do the dirty work to get the clean results.

The eveing activity was a game of capture the flag. The two patrols were joined by Ben and Nick form the ventures and a couple of games were played. Each time the scouts were tagged, they had to come back to the middle and answer a trivia question to be allowed back into the game. Some were easy like their name or the colour of their shirt, but some were difficult like the airspeed of fully laden swallow. Before you ask,we did not specify if it was an African or European swallow.

After the game, there was an amazing sunset so we sat and watched it for a bit in silence and held a Scoutsown to reflect on our year in scouting and the amazing things we have done and seen like just this afternoon, an eagle soaring over the campsite for 10 mins while screeching. That was pretty cool.

We headed back to site for flag down just as it was beginning to get dark.

To finish off the night, a small campfire was lit and for supper some people who are crazy and like that sort of stuff had s'mores. Some jokes and stories were told and then when the scouts headed for bed, the ventures arrived over and had more of the same. It's great to have them here with the scouts. It's a different camp that ventures normally do, but it's working for both sections so far. They join in some activities with the scouts, but will be doing their own venture stuff as well.