Patrols made model camp sites, pitching cardboard tents on polystyrene tiles. Some of the accessories were quite impressive – we’d like to see those on summer camp!
Category Archives: News
Facing dragons
Patrols were asked to invent a product useful to Scouts on camp or elsewhere. At the end of the evening, they presented their ideas to the dragons, in the form of the Leaders, who invested Patrol points in the products they considered best. Welcome to three new Scouts invested at the end of the evening.
Scout District winter camp
45 Hitchin Scouts, including eight from our Troop, camped for two nights near Welwyn. The winter camp traditionally mixes camping skills with activities, which this time included a zip wire, bottle rockets and a camp fire. We are happy to report that everyone survived.
Pancakes
The great thing about having a hall high enough to hold a badminton court is that it’s difficult to get your pancakes stuck on the ceiling. This is particularly important when the church leadership team are meeting just down the corridor! Scouts did their second evening of cooking in Patrols for the term. Not sure why these evenings are so popular…
Cubs Winter Camp 2015
It was a tough time for the teddies and cuddly toys at the Winter Camp. First they were catapulted across the hall and then they tried parachuting from a 45m ALP (Aerial Lifting Platform). All the teddies survived (including the one teddy whose parachute failed to open and who plummeted to earth) but some were severely traumatized by the experience!
Winter Camp is a great time and even though we don’t actually camp out (we stay in a Church Hall), we do lots of activities similar to those we do at Summer Camp. This year, in addition to giving the teddies a work-out, we did orienteering, building towers (out of paper and sticky-tape), rode on trains (to quote Hayley: “Cubs on a train, arguably more scary than snakes on a plane”), visited Stevenage Museum and Stevenage Fire Station, ate lots of good food and did competition Mario karting.
A great weekend and 16 exhausted Cub Scouts (as well as 4 exhausted leaders).
Town trail
Scouts went out around Hitchin in Patrols, looking for words and signs on the sheets they had been given. It can be remarkably easy to miss a bill-board just because it’s above head height! Congratulations to the Kestrels, who are clearly the most observant Patrol and were our winners for the night.
Personal safety
The Cubs have been learning about Personal Safety both in the country and in the city. ‘999’ or ‘No, No, No’ gave them an opportunity to decide when to dial 999 and ‘Which service do you need’ gave them the opportunity to decide what service was needed if they dialed ‘999’ – some confusion about road accidents and which service to call!
All good fun and hopefully educational and keep them safe when out and about.
Knots and lashings
With the District winter camp coming up, we knew that our eight Scouts taking part would be building shelters from plastic sheeting and sisal, so we practised some useful knots. The clove hitch is OK for tying off an improvised guy line to a tent peg, although it’s better when both ends of the rope are being pulled equally (for example when attaching a rope fence to a post). The round turn and two half hitches is better for the bigger jobs, such as tying a rope between two trees to support the shelter.
Sharing our hobbies
The Scouts were invited to bring along their hobbies and interests to demonstrate. As well as a number of collections qualifying for the hobbies badge, we got several musicians as well, so the hall was quite lively.
Baking bread
The Scout Troop is concentrating on the Creative Challenge this term, and there’s nothing better to create than food. Some of the Patrol Leaders had already had a go at this, so they showed their Scouts how to roll out dough and bake it. Then to test the results!