Canada 2023 – Part 5: Homeward bound

Our expedition draws to a close and we are sad to say farewell to Cambridge, Ontario.  We bring back so many tales to tell, new friendships made and a considerable quantity of maple syrup.

We thank our Canadian hosts for their warm welcome, extensive support and sheer hard work looking after us and providing the most amazing experiences our young people could possibly have wished for.

Special thanks to the Canadian Scouters – the awesome Katie, Ana, Philippe and Mike – and our own Leader team – Ben, Sabine, Lucy and Bruce.  They have all sacrificed their holiday time to be responsible for looking after our young people and delivering them back to us safe, happy and with a warm glow – “we did it, wow!”.

Au revoir, Toronto. A bientot!

 

 

 

Canada 2023 Part 4 – Haliburton


We move on to Haliburton Scout Reserve, a beautiful terrain of 5000 acres of woods and lakes. Our scouts have experienced great food, canoeing, low ropes, thunderstorms, a challenging climbing wall, cake, fishing, a camp fire and the somewhat scary sight of machete-wielding leaders.

Look out for Timmy the Turtle!

The beauty of Haliburton

London Calling!

In March our scouts entered 4 teams in the national scout and guide Monopoly run in London. A day of running around the capital as thousands of scouts and guides from across the country swamped the capital. Weirdly our team who had an adult who had never been to London before did best of all…..

Kip on a Ship

With our usual start to the year, the annual mud bath that is Gilwell’s world famous winter camp cancelled this year it was time to find something different for this year. And we found HMS Belfast! The Second World War cruiser, now part of the Imperial War Museum, welcomed 40 of our scouts aboard for the night, where they crewed the bridge, created morse code transmitters, manned the guns and got as taste of what life on the Arctic convoys was like.

Summer camp is back!

July 2022 and summer camp very much a come back for the group! With 2020 and 2021 being badly affected by the pandemic it was the first time for 3 years that our scouts and explorers were able to make the most of a full week away which took them to Hawkhirst on the banks of Kielder Water in Northumberland.

Kielder Forest is one of the most remote places in the UK which gives great opportunity for everything from mountain biking to sailing and hiking to canoeing. It is also a place of outstanding beauty and wild life where the scouts were able to see everything from the very small like Great Crested Newts to the enormous, our site being circled by a magnificent Osprey regularly over the week.

All the photos of a fantastic week below 🙂

Scouts all at sea!

On a fine June evening 16 scouts and 4 leaders gathered in Ipswich for a big step up from the last scout sailing trip which had featured two man dinghies. This time the scouts would find themselves crewing a pair of 49 foot ocean going yachts in the North Sea.

A gentle sail down the Orwell Estuary Friday night saw the boats drop anchor just short of Felixstowe before the next morning they headed out to sea with all hands on deck for a proper adventure!