Reports Page 3
January 2007
BSJ Winter Camp
Winter Camp is a national event at Gilwell Park, the home of Scouting, for any troop or unit across the country that wants to take part in it. All the PG FOUR attended the weekend as part of the two Berkshire Units. It is primarily an activity weekend with a host of activities, including:
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As you can see, there are loads of activities! We were free to go around in groups and do whichever activities we wanted. Mark, Alex and I stayed together for most of the weekend and we did 12 of the activities listed above!
The camp had quite a relaxed feel about it, similar to Summer Camp, which was quite a difference to Autumn Camp (report below), but it made for an enjoyable weekend. The only downside to the weekend was the weather. We had wind and rain most of the time which resulted in lots of mud!
I think we all had a great time and so BRING ON THE JAMBOREE ! (Report by Toby)
October 2006
BSJ Autumn Camp
The third consecutive Jamboree event over the
3 weekends in the middle of October was the much anticipated Autumn Camp.
Unfortunately, we weren't jetting off to Barbados this time and so we
arrived in sunny Bradfield, Berkshire. It was dark, which meant getting all
the tents up wasn't that easy, but we managed. After setting up the site, we
had a campfire and hotdogs.
There was quite a relaxing start to Saturday with a central breakfast which consisted of pitta bread, cheese, orange scrambled egg and pink sausages. Not one to repeat! After this rather strange breakfast we made gateways to our patrol sites (this was very much a patrol weekend) and flagpoles. As my patrol hadn't bought any pioneering poles, we had to go and find poles in the woods but this wasn't too much of a problem. My patrol actually ended up with by far the biggest gateway and we came 2nd (out of the 8 patrols).
The gateways were followed by a ploughman's lunch and then an incident hike in the afternoon. For this, we had to walk around a 1.5 mile course and do various bases. We ended up basically running around it with James' patrol hot on our heels, but we ended up not getting to a base until we reached the campfire circle which was just 100m from the site at the other end of the circular route! We couldn't even do this base because there was another group already there! To make it even worse we found out that there were two bases on the campsite. After an hour, we eventually started our first base which was JOTI using laptops in a marquee. Alex said that he ended up speaking to people in PG's Scout Hut! After this we set off again, and were eventually told that two of the bases were off the route! These were constructing a seat to transport some of the team and a blind trail. We did both these and then returned to the campfire where we did lighting stoves and Trangias.
I hope your still with me on this rather long report, but it continues! After the hike, we started cooking for the competition. My patrol did a Jamie Oliver salad, chicken stir fry with Thai coconut sauce and a Mars Bar dessert. To cut a long story short, we won! later that evening, we all crammed in to the marquee to watch some X-Men thing. Not my idea of a great way to spend a Saturday evening on camp, but hey!
Up at 6:30 on Sunday - it was still dark and very cold! We cooked sauté potatoes, mushrooms, onions, fried eggs, bacon and baked beans (which was somewhat better than Saturdays breakfast!) After breakfast, we had a full kit inspection (back to the old days!) and we then made ballista's to fire a football as far as possible. My patrol came third, firing it nearly 30m. As the camp was drawing to a close (and so is my report) we had lunch and it started to rain. It rained and it rained and it rained. A bit of a shame as the rest of the camp wasn't all that bad. I think by this time, everyone started to want to go home, but first we had to take down the tents and clear the site, which we did surprisingly quickly. As always, the second we finished, the rain stopped! Anyway, the camp drew to a close with a series of notices and the results. My patrol did very well - WE WON! Great news to end a cold and wet camp.
Although not as good as the Summer Camp in Youlbury, it was still much better than the selection weekend and overall a good camp. Thanks to all the leaders. I think we are all looking forward to a very cold, but action packed Winter Camp. Gilwell Park, here we come! (Report by Toby)
My patrol's ballista - www.berkshirescoutsjamboree.org.uk
October 2006
LAN Event
The Second LAN (Local Area Network) event took place in the middle of October. Scouts played a variety of games against each other right through the night using a network set up in the Scout Hall.
The event was very successful with a good turn
out. Once all the money has been collected in, we'll let you know how much
it raised. (Report by Toby)
October 2006
Band Event
Report by James coming soon