Monthly Archive for October, 1999
It was a chilly Saturday morning when eleven SCOGUI members, old and new, met at the beam engine outside the union and set off for the Oaks campsite in a minibus. We arrived at the Oaks and started setting up camp, when we made some important discoveries! Geoff had lost his tent! And we were lacking quite a few essential items of kit! Gav and Carrie went back in the minibus to fetch the missing items, some non-economy tea/coffee and to borrow a table and benches from Gav’s scout group. (Geoffers continued to search for his tent!). Whilst waiting for Gav and Carrie to return the rest of us set to work on our good deed of the weekend, making a seating circle for the small campfire site at the top end of the woods.
After lunch we split in to small groups to test out an activity that was planned for the forthcoming Noah’s Ark rally. The groups consisted of; Sarah, Ali, and Gav, Carrie, John and Helmat, and Cat, Barry, Seb, and Geoff. (Chris opted to stay on site). So the freshers really were thrown in at the deep end of getting to know the older members! The idea of the walk was to visit various checkpoints and gain as many point as you could, the further checkpoints being worth more points. We decided to stick to the closer ones and see which group could get through the most. There were also questions to answer along the way. It was an interesting walk and we all returned safely to a traditional camp dinner of spaghetti bolognaise and long running arguments over carrots, as well as one new complaint that it required garlic! Most of us by this time were cold, wet (especially if we had come unprepared, without boots), and possibly scarred for life. (Try and imagine spending a whole afternoon with Helmet whilst Jon is constantly taking pictures of you! Or with Ali and Gav singing songs you’ve never heard of in their best scout campfire voices! (Which actually aren’t as bad as they tried to make out later) when you’ve really only just met them!)
The rest of Saturday evening was spent amusing ourselves around a campfire, singing silly songs etc. The lads complained that Cat and Sarah were singing too much in tune and making them sound worse (is this possible?) there was a traitor in their group though, known as Gav, who can sing quite nicely but also has the ability to sing quite badly and blend in when required! Sneaky!
After breakfast Sunday we were given the opportunity to spend some time climbing on the climbing tower at the Oaks, which involved abseiling down as well as climbing up. Eventually we packed up our tents and drove home. It was an enjoyable weekend and I hope I can say all had a good time.
Written by Sarah Cooper
