ONS 2013

On Saturday 21st September I went to One Night Stand, an annual Explore Scout event organised by Keynsham Explorer Scouts, at Chelwood Campsite. Because I was working the next morning I was not able to stay over night, but did stay until midnight. We spent most of the time playing tricks on other members of our unit which included moving and cable tying someone (that we knew's) tent while they were asleep inside!

Avon Scout County AGM 2013

On Tuesday 9th July I went to the Avon County Scout AGM at the Bath Racecourse. Amongst other things, I did some archery, blindfold cake decorating and met Amy Williams for the second time! Details of the event from the press release are shown below.

Winter Olympics gold medalist Amy Williams has become an official Scouting ambassador and her first engagement was at Avon Scouts County AGM held recently at Bath Racecourse.
Amy was hosted by Simon and Tracey from Avon Scout Network and invited to a race up a climbing wall against Alex from Bathampton Young Leaders and she also tried her hand at archery with the County team.
Williams hopes to inspire Olympians of the future  with young people often getting their first taste of sporting pursuits and adventure as Scouts. Polar adventurer Dr Ed Coats has also been appointed as a county ambassador and met young members in Bath.
County commissioner Dan Wood said: “Amy Williams and Ed Coats are incredible role models for young people, like so many of our adult volunteers. We hope many more volunteers will follow their lead and join us in the adventure.”

NEX 2013

On 15th June 2013, Simon, some of the Scouts from Bathampton who had recently moved up to Explorers and I, attended the NEX 13 Explorer and Network event at Uphill near Weston Super Mere. 

*** Below is the district's press release from the event ***

Explorer Scouts from Inferno based on the East side of Bath attended NEX13 an annual event for the 14-25 year olds. Joining 120 other young people from across Avon County, the team enjoyed a day on the beach at Uphill near Weston Super Mere.

With lots of free candy floss, a BBQ, ‘Mocktails’, a comedy act and several live bands, the team all ex-Scouts from the 28th and under artistic direction from Simon their former Scout Leader they entered the sand castle building competition and built a stunning skull and cross bones complete with studded treasure chest filled with uncut stones.

The judges commended them for their unique style and themed entry. The winning sand sculptors still had time to enter the tug of war competition, along with members of Bath

ONS 2012

On 22nd September, I went with Simon to One Night Stand, an annual Explore Scout event organised by Keynsham Explorer Scouts, at Chelwood Campsite. We left Bath at about 3 and arrived at the campsite roughly half an hour later. After putting our tents up, we had a wonder around and helped with the finishing touches of the site.
A little later, as people began to arrive, we had a picnic with the leaders from Solar ESU, one of whom, Kathryn, was one of my WSJ leaders.
After a while, I met up with my friend Gary from WSJ, and spent most of the event speaking to him and some of the other people from his explorer unit. There were many activities including climbing, inflatables, a campfire, a disco and a cinema and we did most of them. Despite the fact that it was REALLY cold, I found it really enjoyable and arrived back home at about 10am the next day.

The 22nd World Scout Jamboree

Starting on the 24th July 2011, I attended the 22nd World Scout Jamboree in Sweden - a gathering of 40,000 scouts from almost every country in the world. I documented a day to day record of what we did on my specific jamboree blog which is available here

Gilwell 24 2011

On the 8th July we went as a surprise the Gilwell 24 as part of the jamboree build up. This full write up can be read on my jamboree blog here

Avon Jamboree 2011

On the 27th to 30th May was Avon county scouts "4 seasons Avon Jamboree" which took place between Friday and Monday.

I arrived, after queuing in traffic for over an hour, at the campsite at about 5:30 on the Friday where me and Tom, who was travelling with me met Simon who is our troop leader who directed us up to the explorer sub camp where we met Kimbo and set up our tents. We then met up with Alex who is one of the young leaders with my scout troop.

Gradually more people arrived and set up their tents in our small patch of land and then me and Alex went and visited the 28th, our troop, who all looked very board and called us traitors.

When we got back we were issued wristbands and harlequin neckers and were told that we would be preforming at the opening ceremony the next morning so, after choosing the two songs that we would play, "all the small things" and "i'm yours", we went to the explorer sub camp mess tent, set up our instruments, loaded the words onto our phones, and sang and played! Whilst we played, various people from around the site who could hear us came in including Hannah and James who are also leaders at our troop and became camp photographers and various video's were projected onto the tent roof.

We then got the words for the songs printed out so that everyone could learn them and I had my dinner before visiting the now extremely board 28th and going to bed. We were also told by Kevin that our JTV video (see previous post) was taken by the UK contingent to the all leaders weekend in Sweden and was shown to every adult going to the Jamboree including the king of Sweden, who is also the head of international scouting, who liked it so much that he's asked for us to make another one.

The next morning we had a quick cooked breakfast before taking all the instruments down to the main tent with the stage in and setting up there. I set up Kevin's video camera to record the performance so that we could add it into our next JTV video. The other scouts were then allowed into the large tent and the opening ceremony went on with Peter Carnegie (camp chief), Dan Wood (the new county commissioner) and Wayne Bulpitt (UK chief commissioner) speaking and "JamboGlee" preforming brilliantly (while I recorded).

After the opening ceremony, we helped set the main tent up as the craft tent and took all the instruments back to the explorer area to lock them away and then went down to the main filed for the activities. These included Zorbing, obstacle course, ice skating, scuba diving, shooting, archery, canooeing, inflatables and many, many more. We did the activities until 13:00 when we went up for lunch where we had a talk from Rex who started scouting in Avon but now works with Swedish scouts and is one of the top organizers for the Swedish jamboree and told us about the jamboree, the site, previous Swedish jamborees and loads more interesting and useful information.We then did more activities (that afternoon it was our priority (we got to skip the cue on all the most popular activities)) before dinner which was at about 6. We then surprised Kathryn by giving her presents and a cake seeing it was her birthday the week before which she loved. After this we went down to the main field where there was a carnival. The carnival was quite funny, especially when Kate and Dan went into the stocks to have wet sponges thrown at them. We then briefly visited the 28th and the explorer sub-camp before going back down to see the fireworks in the main field (which were very impressive ones). Afterwards there was a explorer only silent disco in the main tent. This is where everyone gets a pair of headphones and can choose to listen to one of two different DJ's and switch between them throughout the night. This was great and wen't on until midnight when we were escorted back to our tents by armed leaders wearing intense high vis jackets to make sure we didn't wake up the scouts, cubs and beavers. When I got back to my tent I found Josh already in there and instead of tidying his stuff away, he's decided to lie on top of it all.

The next morning I got up at around 8:00 and had breakfast. Kate and Emily auditioned for the "Avon's got talent" competition. We then did the activities again until just before lunch when some of us spoke to Dan Wood (county commissioner), Steve Smith (deputy county commissioner) and Gorden Weston (south west regional commissioner), before having lunch. In the afternoon we did more of the activities including the climbing wall.

The explorers then all met in the main activities field where we were told that we could go on most of the activities for an extra two hours after they were meant to close.
We did this and then went up to the explorer
area for dinner. Kate, Emily and Dan had all got through to the final of Avon's got talent so after dinner I grabbed the video camera and found a good spot on a chair at the very back on the raised platform for the lighting desk where I got a great view of all the acts. I spoke to James (a leader from the 28th) who was taking photos of it at the back whilst Simon was one of the judges. Kate played the saxophone, Dan did the diabalo and Kate and Emily sang - they were all really good. The judges went away to work out the final three and when they came back they were all cheered onto the stage with the exception of Simon who was booed off (partially encouraged be me) the final three were; a cub who played the flute, another explorer who sang 'defying gravity' and Kate with her saxophone. The winner was then decided with the audience cheering and a decibel meter (or a cheap i phone app used by the guy standing next top me to be more precise) and was the girl who sang 'defying gravity'.
We then went back to the explorer area for a bit and wandered around the site (we also visited the 28th again) We then went down to the main tent where we joined in with the end of the main disco before everyone was sent out and we had another explorer silent disco which was awesome fun. We then went back up to the explorer field after it finished at midnight and Me, Kate, Garry, Sam and Harry all went into one tent to play cards and then truth or dare - truth. By the time we finished at about 01:40 we couldn't be bothered to go to our own tents so we all slept in that tent. The next morning we woke up at about 7:00 to find that the tent we were in had leaked badly as well as my tent which Tom and Josh were in (Tom had left his tent due to lack of room because about 10 people tried to sleep in a three man tent) I had a shower and then we had breakfast. We then played an awkward version of Frisbee which involved a tennis ball before a packed away my stuff and put it in Anna's tents so that I could take my tent down. We then did karaoke in the explorer tent and sold some more candyfloss (we'd been selling it all weekend during the activity times and we'd all taken turns in helping) before I said goodbye to everyone, tried to fix Josh's phone in 30 seconds (I failed :() and had to take my kit and lunch along with Tom down to Simon's land-rover ready for us to go off on another camp.

the 28th websites post on camp is available here: http://www.bathamptonscouts.org/2011/06/four-seasons-jamboree-2011/

Avon Scouts - Bear Hunt

On Saturday 7th May was Avon Scouts 'bear hunt'. Simon took some scouts from Bathampton to this and many people from WSJ were also there. At the event we were lucky enough to meet chief scout - Bear Grylls and got him to sign some 'Avonasaurus' merchandise.
You can read more on what I have to say on this on the new Bathampton Scouts website which I have just finished : http://www.bathamptonscouts.org/2011/05/bear-hunt/

Glenny Wood Activity Day

Last weekend was our activity day at Glenny wood that you can read about here: http://ethanjambo.blogspot.com/2011/03/glenny-wood-activity-day.html