Days 8-13

The second half of the trip involved a full week on camp at Halliburton Scout Reserves. 5000 acres of Canadian wilderness complete with some proper wildlife, including bears, wolves and moose! While some of the activities like climbing and archery were familiar to the scouts the way of life on camp definitely wasn’t. No showers, no roads, no plumbing. Transport everywhere was by canoe, something the scouts got very good at over the week.

Most striking of all was the completely different scale to UK scouting, where a campsite of 100 acres would be considered big and where you can normally shout to your neighbours.

Congratulations to 4 of our scouts for making it onto the Haliburton wall of fame for speed climbing!

Day 6
Our time in Cambridge and with our wonderful host families is coming to an end, the big adventure in the Canadian wilderness is fast approaching! Most of Friday was spent packing and checking kit and all the other prep that goes into summer camp.

The scouts though still found time for a pie eating contest, an attempt at a car theft* and a patrol leader giving a lesson on what happens if you kneel down while a PL is looking for a seat! Tomorrow it’s off to bear country…….

*not really!

Day 5
The scouts were left to their own devices as the Canadian scouts took the Cambridge Scouts for the grand tour of their home town

Meanwhile the leaders got taken on their own tour! Not a huge number of photos from Thursday.

However…. elsewhere in Canada one of our cub leaders Hannah “Shere Khan” Wheatley has been working at another Canadian summer camp and has been sending us photos of all her adventures as well! She’ll have some war stories to tell the Cubs when she gets back but in the mean time……

Day 4

A big day out and a visit to the lovely city of Toronto.

The breath-taking CN Tower, with its glass floor, is certainly not for the faint-hearted!

We’re loving bringing the two 12th Cambridges together!

In the evening we went to a baseball game at the Rogers Centre – Toronto Blue Jays vs Oakland Athletics.

After an exciting game which saw the Blue Jays trailing, they went on to win:

Athletics (44-57)  2   –    Blue Jays (47-54) 3

We’ll let our Canadian friends explain what that score actually means!!!

Day 3

This was a chance to relax and have fun with our host families. Archery, walking and experiencing the local sights & sounds all featured.

We will give updates here as we receive them!

Day 2

After a warm welcome from our Canadian hosts and an early night, we’re straight into a trip to Niagara falls on our big yellow bus.

Donning some rather fetching red ponchos is the way to keep dry, apparently.

Day 1

After 2 years of planning, the big day has arrived!

15 Scouts & Explorers and 5 Leaders set off from Cambridge to…..Cambridge, Ontario, Canada.

“We were sailing, we were sailing, home again, ‘cross the sea”  (apologies to Rod Stewart!)

Day 1

Assembling early morning for a briefing and issuing of waterproofs & life-jackets, 20 scouts and leaders headed out from Ipswich Haven on a pair of 49-foot Oyster yachts.  Passing through the lock, they were soon under the Orwell Bridge and powering down the river towards the North Sea at 6 to 7 knots.  The crews were put through their paces by the skippers, raising & lowering sail, helming and sail-trimming.

Lunch, cooked by the scouts in the galley below decks, was served in shifts whilst underway.  As the boats steered home towards Shotley Point Marina, there was still time for some play – hanging from the halyards over the water always puts smiles on faces!

Day 2

Sunday saw a fresh pair of crews arrive at Shotley.  Perfect sailing conditions were provided – plenty of sunshine and a Force 3-4 breeze.  Locking out from the marina, the scouts got their first taste of freedom, with a fast sail up and down the River Stour.  A little later, they ventured out past Harwich and the cranes of Felixstowe docks, where the open sea provided slightly bumpier water.

Returning to the Orwell and heading for home, the boats found themselves in a photo-shoot (the strange chap taking photos from another boat turned out to be the GSL’s father).  The appearance of the Orwell Bridge signalled the approach of Ipswich and the end of the voyage.

A huge thank you to the skippers and mates of Adventures Offshore for this fantastic introduction to ‘big-boat’ sailing for our novice sea-farers!

Over Easter 5 of our intrepid scouts joined our neighbours in Hertfordshire Scouts for initial mountaineering course (IMC) at Lochearnhead Scout Station in the Scottish Highlands. Eight days of learning to take on some of the UK’s highest, most rugged and most beautiful terrain all based out of possibly the country’s most eccentric scout campsite, a disused railway station on the side of a mountain.

For 3 our scouts it was their first time on the course and indeed in terrain like this. For the other two it was a chance to repeat the course and build on what they learned last year. From the dramatic skyline of the Tarmachan ridge to the remote solitude of Inverlochlarig the scouts learned to navigate, camp and climb some of Scotland’s most spectacular mountains.

The week culminated in a 3 day, 2 night expedition, camping wild in the mountains, a far cry from many of the well kept campsites the scouts are used to on many of our camps.

Final note…. if you see any of our scouts wearing a red and green tartan necker, that is the necker of the Nicholson clan and can be worn by any scout who has stayed at Lochearnhead. Worn with pride by all our scouts who have completed the course 🙂

As a real final note…. as well as our 5 scouts on the course we have two of our young leader explorer scouts there for the week who volunteered to join all the other staff to cook meals, clean toilets, fix things and all the other glamorous jobs that keep events like this happening. A thank you to them and of course all the instructors, staff, organisers and everyone else at Hertfordshire Scouts for having our contingent as their guests for the week!

Probably best to stop typing and let the photos do the talking……