TLW Challenge – 24 September Saturday, Sep 25 2010

The TLW is in two parts (again) this week.

PART 1.

Following from last week’s meeting, I have drafted the Acceptable Behaviour Agreement.  The first part is to review this agreement and to comment on it.  For those not at the last Troop meeting where copies were handed out, it can be found here: http://2leftwellies.wordpress.com/acceptable-behaviour-agreement/

PART 2.

Next week, we will have a Night Hike.  Scouts are required to present a working torch.

(they will also need to be dressed appropriately for the conditions -which will be warm, dry, with suitable boots)

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A New Tent for Me! (also, found a sale!) Thursday, Jun 17 2010

I was in St. Albans today having a wander round, and noticed that Millets were having a sale, with many things half price (you’ve been told folks, stock up now for the camping season!).  I also saw that their tents were also in the sale.

My current 2-person tent is now about 15 years old, and is really starting to show signs of age, so I’d started to think about getting a new, shiny tent anyway.  We already have a 3-person tent, but when camping you should try to consider the amount of ambient air that’s in the tent – after all, it will mostly be your body heat keeping it warm in winter.  Additionally, the 3-person tent is still looking clean and neat – and I know I would get into big trouble if I got that dirty too!

So, back to now – and I’ve bought the Eurohike FlashFuze II.  A 2-person, pop-up tent!  Unlike other pop-ups, this is a double layered tent with a hydrostatic head of 2000 (for those wondering if I’ve headed into techno land… most popups have been single-skinned – that is only one layer, so if the water comes through you’ve had it.  The hydrostatic head should mean it can put up with a downpour without problems)

The important shopping bit… instead of £60, I paid £30.

Right – now the fun bit.  This is the tent ready to go:

I unzip the bag, take off the retaining strap… and in about the time it’s taken you to read this….

The tent’s ready for the pegs (the picture is before I put the pegs in, in case you wondered).  Four on each corner, four on the guys and job done!

So the tents up in seconds.  There’s no “porch space” as you would get on a standard tent, so everything will have to go inside the tent (not so good if your kit is muddy) – but I did notice that there’s a sliver of space by the door to get a couple of boots there should you need. Ultimately though, I’d suggest making use of a Welly bag or a car boot liner – I think it’ll be easier in the long term.

As with all 2-person tents, it’s 2-people with no kit; so this should be ideal for me and my typical failed attempt at lightweight camping (although I’m sure if I went camping on the moon I could consider my average kit weight lightweight ).  Also because of its shape, it is of no use to the lightweight backpacking camper – this will not roll up smaller and kit cannot be distributed amongst the walking party.  It would be of use for those heading out to multiple camping festivals (and don’t want to leave the tent there) or do the occaisonal camp (and so really don’t want the faff of working out whether the pole they are holding is for the front or the back of the tent).

Dropping the tent was a little longer – about 30 seconds or so – but there is a knack to getting the metal hoops to fall into place.  Once done though it all drops into the bag and you’re ready.

As to how it fairs… well, I’ll be testing it later this year, so I’ll update then

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Pathfinder Weekend Monday, Oct 19 2009

Our largest camp for sometime… 15 Scouts headed up to Lees Wood for a walking weekend.  When I arrived, the site was already buzzing with Scouts from all over the District pitching tents on the difficult soil of Lees Wood, but all in very good spirits.  Shortly the tents were up and the Scouts were being scouts.  Hot dogs were cooked and with hot chocolate the evening passed quickly (for the leaders, the 17^th Harrow had cooked a really nice stew!)

It was a slightly cold night, but Saturday morning came quick enough and the Scouts cooked their breakfasts.  Each camp patrol had decided their own menus for the weekend and had gone shopping for it, making this quite interesting to watch as they endeavoured to cook for themselves, with the leaders just offering guidance rather than taking over. 

After breakfast – and washing up – the Scouts made their lunches and prepared to leave.  Ash’s group of older Scouts were walking from the campsite to Chalfont & Latimer, Ivor’s group were walking from Heronsgate to Lees Wood and David’s group were walking the reverse of Ash’s route – Chalfont & Latimer to Lees Wood.  Alan (the driver for the day) walked with David until we met up with Ash then walked back to the bus.

The walk was quite pleasant and interesting.  In David’s group, James “Dragons breath” Zoel manage to trip over his shoelaces (twice!) quite early on in the walk; this gave him quite a sore, grazed knee to deal with.  As David’s group was walking along the Chess Valley Walk they heard a loud splashing sound – a small herd of longhorn cows were running alongside them along the River!  David and Ash’s group met up and decided it was a suitable occasion for lunch.  After lunch, we carried on with a short pause at Sarratt for a Coke and a comfort break.

Ivor’s group took a little longer to return to site – their navigation had led them to walk a large circle early on rather than following the route!

Once all were back on site, the evening meal was cooked.  Later James “Dragon Breath” Zoel demonstrated his ability to keep a fire going; Oskar entertained us with imitations of many of Doctor Who’s cyber enemies; and Jamie demonstrated what happens if you put too much pine leaves on an open fire (slow burn, then whoomf!)

Sunday morning was at a much slower pace.  The Scouts cooked their breakfasts, washed up and the leaders took the vehicles up to Phasels Wood.  Today we would walk as a single group with 3 map readers to confirm directions, turns etc.  Unfortunately the previous day’s efforts had depleted any energy and map reading skills – and as Leaders we found ourselves walking quite slowly (average speed of 2km/h!) and waiting near footpath junctions as the Scouts wandered off in the wrong direction.  Luckily the weather was really nice for the time of year, so it wasn’t too bad.  At Phasels we got in the bus and car and headed back.

On return to Lees Wood we found that Bruce had already dropped the Scouts tents for them, so there wasn’t much else to do (the other Troops had also long gone, so it was just the leaders tents to sort out.  We loaded the Scout trailer (I loaded my bicycle trailer!) and we all headed for home.

It had been a weekend of two long, challenging hikes but the scouts had completed it.  It had been a walk with a purpose – all those attended had planned the menu and the walks; they had then successfully shopped and cooked and completed the routes without any major hitches.  It was an achievement that they should be proud of.

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February Camp – or “I’m a Scout at Winter Camp, Get me Out of Here” Wednesday, Feb 11 2009

Whilst I consider myself a seasoned camper, this was another one of those excellent moments when you find yourself learning all over again.  With the heavy snows the week before, I was wondering what sort of weekend we were going to have – if at all.  However, the decision was made to go ahead.

Friday night we drove to Phasels – and the first order of the day (being a winter camp) was to get the fire going.  This would have been fine, if it wasn’t for the foot deep snow that covered everything! Luckily, after shifting a few pallets we found (relatively) dry wood and we could get  the fire going.  Also, the snow made everything much more light (even at 9pm) so putting the tents up was fairly easy!

I say easy – we started with 8 Scouts, but before the first tent was pitched two decided that winter conditions weren’t for them, so they went home (good job we were close to home!)

Saturday morning and I woke up – a little cold – but to a beautiful sight –

The Scouts had already got up and had got the main fire going – which was good news (less good was that it had taken them 2 matchboxes, half a box of firelighters and half a bag of dry kindling to do so!). Still we got an altar fire going and eventually got breakfast cooked (we also found that the temperatures had played havoc with the camping gaz, so the cookers were almost useless!).  Lunch was then next, so the potatoes were wrapped in foil and deposited in the ashes.  Unfortunately one of the Scouts had smuggled his mobile phone onto camp and we found that this had enabled another to phone home and make arrangements to leave Saturday afternoon.  In resolving this, our fourth less-than-happy camper also decided that he wanted to go home.

We had only brought enough food for breakfast and lunch – so we took a hike to the local supermarket to buy the evening meal and Sunday’s breakfast.  Surprisingly for the time of day the supermarket was heaving with people catching up on lost shopping!  Still we got away with what we wanted and returned to site.

Before we started the evening meal, the Scouts had a go on the Rolling Wall – an indoor revolving climbing wall which will challenge even the most adventurous Scout – and being only a few feet from the ground at any time means that you won’t need certification to let Scouts have a go (Phasels have put this into a room that they are also building a traversing wall, providing activities that campers can enjoy even into the evening).  On the wall we invested Luke and Alastair – another “unusual investiture” under our belts.

The evening meal was Cowboy Stew – a foil packet containing veg, meat, and stock and cooked in the embers – followed by Bananas and Chocolate.  Still a little peckish, Ivor and David then had apples, brown sugar and currants whilst the Scouts toasted marshmallows and bread.

Given the lack of sleep last night, the Scouts were quick to retire Saturday evening; by 10:30 nothing could be heard across the camp.

On Sunday morning the altar fire was quickly started and breakfast dispatched.  Being a short camp, we then struck camp (although the cold had slowed up the Scouts… well, that’s my reasoning) and soon after lunch we went home.

It was a camp like no other – we couldn’t have planned for it; and for those that lasted all the way to the end of the camp I don’t think that they will ever forget it either!

 

The other thing I tried over the camp was the use of the micro-blogging website twitter – www.twitter.com – posting regular updates on how the camp was progressing.  This enabled parents to follow the camp as we got on.  To see the blogs, go to www.twitter.com/frog_scout – but note that these are in newest post first, so you will need to scroll through to read them in the “right” order.

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The Weekend Hiking towards the Expedition Challenge Award. Wednesday, Oct 22 2008

(article by Ivor)

We got away fairly much on time – well ten minutes later than scheduled.  The first objective was to get to Lees Wood camp site where Ash would leave his car and then everybody would go in the minibus from there to the start point for the younger team.  This was just before Latimer Village.  Ash was to shadow this team while Ivor was to shadow the older team starting from Heronsgate.  The weather forecast was excellent for hiking and actually behaved itself.  So Ash and the  5 boys were left at their start point and Ivor took the other 4 to the footpath at Heronsgate.  This happened to be in the narrow section of road approaching Heronsgate from the M25 roundabout at junction 17, which made things very awkward.  Ivor then proceeded to the car park next to the church at Chorleywood Common and waited for the 4 scouts to appear. What was estimated as three quarters of an hour turned into twice that time but the boys arrived at the bus at 13.00 and had their lunch.

The rest of the walk was fairly uneventful and the team arrived at Lees Wood at 5pm to discover that the younger boys had been there over an hour.  The younger team had also erected their tent and cooked their meal on the new Coleman lightweight cookers.  The older team proceeded to do this and most of their work was out of the way by 7pm.  On site were the Harrow Radio Society who had set up their sets for the Jamboree on Air and who were making contact with scouts all over the world.

Next day the boys were up bright and early and at 7.30am were heard playing in the woods!  If only they had put their effort into getting breakfast and packing away, we might have departed by 10am and not 11am.  The Sunday hike was to be a straight forward walk through Whippendale Woods in a circular manner, going down to the Canal.  It was changed to a direct route and as a result the walk finished by 1.30pm.  The minibus had earlier been taken to the end point next to Croxley Green underground station and everybody climbed aboard exhausted ready for the journey back to camp, for Ash’s car, and then back to St Peters.

 

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Night Hike Monday, Oct 6 2008

Well, it was warmer than I thought it would be… but still one or two Scouts managed to turn up improperly dressed (IT’S AUTUMN GUYS, IT’LL GET COLD AT NIGHTS!!!!).  We set off towards Bentley Priory to do the smaller circular walk.  It was a reasonable turn out and we set out from Stanmore Common.

Heading up into the woods we walked past the Deer Park – given the noise the Scouts were making I doubted seeing anything – so imagine my surprise when the first torch beam landed on a Deer!  Rather than run away (probably blinded by the lights) the deer just stood there as more lights were directed towards him, before slowly moving off. 
We carried on up to Bentley Priory itself, the high fencing still looking impressive, and we carried on through.

The Scouts had a bit of a challenge with their navigation – partly due to it being dark, and partly because they were focusing on talking to each other and not looking for signposts!  But hey, it was a night out.  Consequently, we did end up following some quite odd footpaths (which may not have been) to get back to proper footpaths (and the bus).  It also took us quite a while to walk the shorter of the two circular walks – so I’m glad we did take the shorter option!

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