A day off the from work was great, as anything to get out of working eight hours in a meat factory was great. The venue was Walesby near Ollerton, which I had been a lot to as a Cub being only thirty minutes down the road from where I grow up. Borrowing a car for the weekend I set out about 5 and even after stopping at MacDonalds was at Walesby by 6. After having a few swift ones in the bar I realised it was 10:30, had no beer and was over the limit to drive so it was a quiet night. Everyone sat around the fire singing for a few hours, before gradually disappearing to bed.
The morning began early as I had to go pick up the SSAGO Secretary from Retford station, but she forgot to tell anyone that she had changed trains so was not there when I got there. After waiting for a while I cleared off back to the site, passing the second person dispatched to collect her (apparently). Personally the morning was spent in the SSAGO reps meeting, relaying information about PRI and background checking (which was introduced after the rally). Everyone else went on a treasure hunt around the site and local area.
As Walesby is a multi activity centre all the activities were on site except with most people rafting on the river through the site. I choose to do some service work, followed by university challenge with a scratch Loughborough/Nottingham/Leeds but a with a team of two geographers and an electrical engineer we struggled loosing to Cambridge. In the late afternoon everyone on site disappeared into the pool, which considering it was an outdoor pool was amazing. After swimming at double pace for about an hour, it was time for a Gaddaffy Plate challenge. GP is the SSAGO challenge plate, given to the organisation by some Libyans in the early 1980s. The challenge was to collect jelly bears off the bottom of the pool. As Loughborough people were a bit thin on the ground, it became a joint Coventry/Loughborough team and as I was appalling at it, it was fortuitous that the Cov bloke was excellent. We won, but as Cov had recently folded Scogui were awarded the plate.
After the swimming the rafters began to return, as did the pub crawlers from Mansfield. The Old Gits then began feeding us all, with a menu that included punch and vodka melon. Utilising the storm shelter the barn dance was on-site, with Ranygazoo returning to perform for the Sweetie Rally. Scogui had choosen not to participate in the fancy dress, because basically we did not get organised. Leicester ended up winning as lollipops. With the proximity of a Cub district camp the barn dance finished about 10:30, with the heat generated by the dancers and the smoke machine setting off the buildings fire alarm which as the barn doors were open was not a problem. The evening ended with singing and talking around the campfire until the sun arose.
Sunday morning was once again silly games, but this time with added water. All was going fine until I had an altercation with a plastic bucket slicing open my nose, which at work the next morning at 6am was interesting. After lunch we disappeared around the country, and slightly concussed I headed for A1 and home.
Written by Martin Whelan
0 Responses to “Walesby Rally”