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Reports Page 2 Sunrise Day Other than a few people who had got up to watch the actual sunrise, the entire troop rolled out of bed at around 6:00. We went down to the sub camp around 8:00 and we were very quickly parading to the main arena. Following the Sunrise Ceremony, which saw several impressive displays, and a role-play of the beginning of the first scout camp, on Brownsea Island. The end of the ceremony saw over an hour of neckerchief signing, until the arena was emptied to make room for the Catholic Ceremony. Toby, Alex Price and I headed to the Desert Hub stage after arriving back on site and we then sat, and meditated, our way through a Buddhist service. The afternoon was filled with a Food Festival and parties all around the park, our troop hosted horseracing and provided cocktails and scones. All of us went to the ‘Gifts for Peace’ concert in the evening and saw many people and bands playing some well-known music. When I got back I sat outside with Ness, Laura, Alice and Ian for about half an hour and then headed off to bed Day 8 Got up at 6am, had a continental breakfast and walked to the Roundabout bus stop and the troop was then split into 3 groups. Our group had Laura (L) and Alex as leaders and as such we were subsequently split into two groups, ending with Andrew, Ben, Nick, Amy, Catherine and I in a group. By chance our group was combined with one of the other Berkshire groups under another of our leaders, Matt. Our group was dispatched to Nowlsey Wood where we laid down a path and raked the existing path flat as the morning’s activity. At around 13:00 we had lunch and all but a few of the group were soon fast asleep in the picnic area and Jorgen, our Starburst co-ordinator, had to put in a great deal of effort to wake everybody up. The afternoon was spent helping to clear a woodland clearing, by burning excess wood and collecting more from the surrounding area. We returned to the site around 16:00 to find that Ness had hurt her leg, during the work on her project, and had been taken to hospital. As several of us did not feel like eating the dinner that was on offer that evening, Toby, Laura (L), Catherine, Amy and I went out for fish and chips instead. Day 9 We all got up late as we were staying on-site this day; we were heading to the Global Development Village. After all of the washing up was completed Amy, Mark, Laura (L), Catherine, Alex Price and I walked to the GDV. We arrived slightly late, having stayed behind to finish the washing up, and arrived just as everybody was starting towards their designated sectors. Having missed the selection process we just joined the nearest group, however seeing that it was heading to the Peace section of the Village, which had been split in four, we changed groups, deciding upon the Health Section. On arriving in the Health section Mark randomly selected a card and we moved off towards the given base. The base that we were to spend the next two hours doing turned out to be on nutrition in Bangladesh. This activity involved playing a form of educational snakes and ladders, called Nutrition Ludu. This game used snakes and ladders to explain the advantages of certain typed of nutrition to certain people and the disadvantages of a lack of nutrition. Following this we played ‘Hadudu’ a Bangladeshi form of tag rugby. After the end of the base we went to the International Village to have a look at the Bangladeshi tent. Day 10 Got up early, yet again, and had yet another cold breakfast before moving to the buses where we had a huge wait at the main bus terminal. Eventually we managed to climb onto a bus, I slept for the majority of the journey, waking up two hours into the journey to find myself in a bus sitting a slow moving queue. After another half an hour we arrived at Alton Water, an Anglian Water drinking water reservoir. Toby, Mark, Catherine and I walked around a large part of the shore of the reservoir until we reached the kayaking site. After a quick initial briefing we paddled out onto the water. Once on the water everybody quickly remembered their kayaking skills and the games started. After roughly an hour on the water, which saw some well organised games and several major splashing fights, we had to get back off. We soon dried off in the sun, met Laura (L) and Pete and went to the café to find Matt. Mark kindly bought me a Magnum and we sat relaxing for a little while before being ushered back towards the buses. On the way we met up with the majority of the rest of the Berkshire unit and following a long wait behind a group of Italians, we were on a bus. We arrived back and half the unit, including myself, went to one of the Italian troops on our sub camp for dinner. The meal that followed was easily the best that I ate on the Jamboree, as we were served freshly made pasta with tomatoes and mushrooms quickly followed by two helpings of pork in different and delicious sauces. We then had three puddings, tinned pears in syrup, nutella pancakes and treacle tart. Day 11 Today was another relaxing day onsite, although that is not to say that it wasn’t busy, I had to rise early and help my patrol cook a breakfast of ‘eggy bread’, sausages and baked beans. We went to Terraville for the day and I found myself in a group with Alice and Laura. We wandered around the TerraVille site and stumbled across the UK where we decided to visit Scotland’s section where we were part of an educational version of a Burns Supper with vegetarian haggis (as if there could possibly be such a thing!!) We then went to the Scouts of China tent (Scouts from Taiwan as Scouting in China itself is banned because, I believe, it is seen to oppose the ideals of Communism) where I learnt to write ‘One World One Promise’ and my name in Chinese which I then transferred to a fan provided to us. We went to lunch again where another show of jousting was on show, however, it was too hot to stay watching, as there was no shade, and on top of this Alice wanted to find her parents who were visiting the site as part of the horde of day visitors that invaded each day. She and Laura went to find them whilst I moved to the food tent where I was stumbled upon by Mark and Toby. We went into the tent in the hope of trying the Belgian waffles on offer but gave up after 20 minutes as nobody turned up to man the station. Mark, Toby and I then progressed to the Austrian stool where we were supplied with marzipan and chocolate to dip in a chocolate sauce. With Toby leading the way the three of us left the tent wandered into a Finnish tent where we were taught to play an instrument, the name of which I had long since forgotten. Toby and Mark went grass skiing and then practiced their baseball skills whilst I played the part of photographer. The three of us then made our way back to the food tent and stopped to make our own paper which we then cut into postcards (although we decided they were too fragile to actually be used). We then reached our destination and had another Austrian marzipan ball and finally succeeded in eating some Belgian waffle which turned out to be well worth the wait. We ate dinner and went down to the hub, bought a pack of donuts and shared them between the three of us. We then watched the fire show that had been arranged as the hubs activity for the evening. Day 12 Got up, had an early shower and then had a bacon sandwich for breakfast. I then headed off to Trash with the rest of the Berkshire unit. I ended up in a group of 12 and we were designated to begin the session in the Art zone of the area (the area having been spilt into 4 sections, Art, Music, Knowledge and Challenge) The 12 of us managed to fashion an image of a bicycle accident from the rubbish that we were provided with. We then moved on to the Knowledge section but here we had to lose two of the group as teams for the quiz that was to follow could only be a maximum of 10. Alice, Laura, Toby and I then skipped the challenge section and moved straight to the music section where we used rudimentary shakers, drums and percussion instruments to play a tune. We then left the Trash area early and Toby and I headed to the World Village to explore, had lunch and then I went with Matt to Elements to pick up a card. On the way back he and I stopped in the Global Development Boulevard and had a look at some of the stools that neither of us had visited. At 14:00 Toby and I went back to the World Village to take part in a pre-arranged course for roughly one and a half hours. We then looked around the Village for a bit longer, returning for dinner around 17:00. Had Red Thai Curry for dinner with the most disgusting and burnt rice I have ever tasted in my life, complimented with hard peas. I then watched the carnival go past with some of the rest of the troop and then followed it around for a little while whilst having a laugh with some of the members of the troop who were with me. We all then went to the hub for a show run by Promise FM (the Jamboree radio station). Day 13 Got up and had another cooked breakfast which was closely followed by some major washing up. The washing up was such a priority because all the pots, pans and utensils belonged to the Jamboree and had to go back spotless, on top of this I was in charge of cleaning the stoves and cooking surfaces. Luckily for this I had the help of Mark, the master washer-upper. The most difficult part of the washing up was the billy that had been host to the burnt rice that we had the previous night, this had to have water and fairy liquid boiled in it, then washing powder and still caused us to go to Sainsbury’s to buy more scrubbers and fairy liquid to finish the washing up!!! The entire troop then went for the UK Contingent photo outside Hylands House. We gathered for the photo around 10:30 and didn’t leave the area for another hour! We then continued the exciting job of washing up until lunch when Toby and I went to the internet cafe to use up our remaining time. After lunch we came back and tidied up our tent, packing away all of our personal kit, purchases and souvenirs. After we had finished packing away the mountains of rubbish that had accumulated in our tent over the two weeks we decided that we definitely deserved a rest and went off in search of a milkshake. We came back and the entire troop went out for dinner on the unit. After a very satisfying dinner we returned to the site to get ready for the closing ceremony. We went down to the sub camp but just as we arrived it began to pour with rain and my scout trousers were soon soaked, forcing me to dash back to our site and change into my waterproof trousers. We went to the ceremony as a sub camp and managed to sit in a very good central position, after two ceremonies of being stuck behind a large TV screen, surrounded by photographers. The ceremony started with some performances by the onsite cast and then saw shows by the Scouts of China, Ireland and an attempt at the Jambo song by Bangladesh. Laura (L) who had been parading into the arena with her band arrived and sat down just to rush off again with Dean, one her friends, who had hypothermia. There was then a video dedicated to the IST, to thank them for all the hard work they put in, making the Jamboree possible. After the fantastic performances by the scouts from around the world the stage crew built a bridge on stage, that appeared to have no supports except itself. This bridge was then stood on by many scouts from around the world, symbolising the bridges of peace and understanding Scouting helps to build. Important scout leaders from around the world, such as Peter Duncan the Chief Scout arrived on stage. Dean and Laura returned as the celebratory fireworks begun and the entire Jamboree sung Auld Lang Syne, with a little prompting from the Jamboree Cast. To end the Jamboree the Cast performed a ‘Best of’ the music played on the Jamboree then at 10:45 the music stopped and we were asked to return to our sites. We stayed in the arena for another hour and ran down to the stage to get a picture in front of the stage, ignoring the protesting stewards who wanted us to return to our sites ‘as quietly and quickly as possible’. Eventually we returned to our sites and either went to bed or walked off to roam the Jamboree site. Day 14 Departure day. This day saw us get up at a relatively reasonable hour and pack away our hike tents and finish tidying up our personal kit, ready to go. We managed to commandeer some of Sainsbury’s shop trolleys and wheeled our stuff from our site over to the Energise area where we were to wait for our coach home. Our coach finally arrived and we were told that we couldn’t take our bags on the coach ‘for safety reasons’ … of course. We managed it on every other coach but this time it was a ‘breach of health and safety’ and so all of our equipment was crushed into the compartments underneath that were too small for all of our stuff. After a relatively easy coach journey we arrived in Reading and after a few quick goodbyes I had to rush off to get ready to go on holiday very early the next morning. |
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