Life auction

What if everything about you was suddenly taken away, and you had to buy a new personality? What would be important to you? Fame, family, friendship, faith or fortune? Patrols made bids to buy themselves new lives, and then we discussed their choices and what really matters to the Scouts.

Camp site layout

Each Patrol used models to discuss what makes a good site, and where to put our tents and other facilities. Of course, every camp site is different, and we won’t always agree about the answers, but we have all thought about what matters when we choose.

Trading nations

For our Global Challenge, thinking about what it’s like not to be a first-world country, we played an economics game. Each Patrol was a different country, with its own limited natural resources and its own peoples’ needs to meet.

Camp 3: rolling rock and rabbit warren

Given a leader with an iffy knee, the planned hike wasn’t going to work, and we had a rethink. We challenged ourselves to the rolling rock, a kind of continuous climbing wall that moves down as fast as you climb up, and then tips to simulate an over-hang. Kanchenjunga here we come! What comes up must come down, so we then explored the underground tunnel system – the nearest thing to real caving in Hertfordshire.

Camp 1:Batak and buzzwire

On our first day at Phasels Wood for summer camp, we pitched our tents and then tried two activities testing our reactions. In Batak, the player has to hit each button as it lights up in a random sequence. Human buzzwire is the usual game moving a ring along a wire, except that the ring is on a helmet attached to your head…