As well as putting the final touches to our playlets, we spent a little time in a Troop Forum, discussing what activities we’d like and where we could go for next year’s summer camp. We also invested two new Scouts – welcome to the Troop!

Week two of our badge sessions, with Scouts variously working on their music, cycling, craft, survival or artist skills.

We carried out one of our famous chip shop surveys. Each Scout in a Patrol arrived with chips from a different shop, and we compared them using the criteria decided last week. (Then we ate all the chips. Well, most of them anyway.) Congratulations to the Town Fryer, which came out top with more Patrols than any other shop, so gets our vote – for this year!

Scouts each chose one of the artist, craft, cyclist, musicians or survival badges. Over the coming weeks, we’re aiming to complete the requirements – we started tonight. We also did a bit of planning for next week (more later).

Continuing our mapping theme, we looked at how to use map and compass together. The Scouts walked up the grid lines in the hall and didn’t meet each other, so found that they can’t all point to the same north, and magnetic north doesn’t even stay put. We still managed to find north and set our maps though 🙂

It’s all the rage – cycling with no roads involved. Our event had no bikes either – a virtual bicycle tour, planning our route and using maps to find out what we would have seen, if only it hadn’t been so dark outside.

Two Scouts brought along their collections, one of hats and another of bottle tops, and told us about them, earning their hobbies badges in the process.

We went up to a local camp site and played some wide games, finishing up round the camp fire with sausages.

The Patrols competed to build the strongest newspaper bridge. The Leaders had a go too, but were soundly out-built. We had various designs, including a suspension bridge, but the best could support a seated adult. Arup and Buro Happold have nothing on us!