My money is on Noddy

New year... new house... new scouting role


nothing like jumping in at the deep end!

Sorry while I compose myself, I find that picture hilarious

...


*bites fist*


... sorry, I got to look at that picture again....


Right, what was I talking about... ah yes, me starting explorers. And what a way to start, before I had even been down to a normal meeting night I was away camping with them at Gilwell Winter Camp. I've been to Gilwell a couple of times now, but this was the first time I was at Winter Camp.


The weekend wasn't exactly wintery, but it was a grand opportunity to get to know some of the explorers. Like how they had a competition to see who could pull using the line "Do you like apples?"

Who would have thought that they would be Good Will Hunting fans?

And being mildly disturbed when one of them actually succeeded!

Or how one of them had a random dream, an extremely random dream, it was about a fight to the death between the Hulk and Noddy... he subsequently ended up with the nick-name of Noddy.

Personally, my money is on Noddy

Winter camp also gave me the opportunity to catch up with some mates from previous events. In some cases instead of 'catch up' read 'bother'... as in the potter puppet pals.

I literally bothered one of them like this. The other I joined on the leaders pub quiz and we came joint 7th out of 39. I think I know who got off lightly.

The day after the camp I got to actually start explorers officially, with my first meeting at the hall. It wasn't much to write about as it was program planning... so I'll skip a week, to when we did the life auction.

I did it a while back with the scouts, but as there are more explorers I added some more lots to the auction: like a house of your dreams, being a trend setter and travelling. The explorers seamed to really get into it and there was even some fights for some items.

All in all, a good start I think!

Gilwell Reunion

Well I've already said about me arriving onsite for Gilwell Reunion, I suppose I really should cover the rest of it!


This was my first time ever going to Gilwell, yet alone Gilwell Reunion, so I wasn't really sure what to expect.


I camped with Rosie, Rich and the rest of the Freespirit ESU gang from Wales; and after my late arrival the night before it was a pleasure to wake up the bacon butties (a pleasure purely reserved for camp)

And buying one of these... part of their fundraising efforts for the Jamboree.

Once suitably attired, it was time to explore the site. A big part of Gilwell Reunion is that they have a load of stalls to give you program ideas for your section.

"ooo, that looks interesting..." *picks up leaflet and shoves it in bag*

...*plods along*

"We could adapt that to work" *shoves more leaflets in bag*

...

*waits for freespirit people as they are selling stuff to random people*

...

"You heard of that before?" *grabs more bits of paper- which, if I am honest, I will most likely not look at again- and shoves into ever bulging bag*

But it wasn't just leaflets gallore, at a load of them you got to actually try out the activity as well.

Like making edable campfires....

Nom nom nom

Or tie dying, which unfortunately didn't have any gloves! thanks Lucy!

... and this was after me spending about 10minutes scrubbing them!

But it wasn't all work, there was Pimms on the Lawn

And a campfire... although it was a sit down one, didn't want any of the old dears to pop a hip now did we? The guy running it was brilliant tho, really funny

That and getting to see a load of my friends from past adventures again... some of which I havn't seen in about 3 years, which is just shockly long.

Was a fantastic weekend, lots of ideas on offer and some very very good company