Scouts is the third section in the scouting family and is for boys and girls aged 10-14. It comes after cubs and before Explorers.
Our scouts meet as two separate troops at the Group HQ. Both troops meet between 7:30 and 9. “Wildcat” troop meet on a Wednesday, “Raptor” troop on a Thursday.
Plus of course both troops have plenty of weekend camps and trips out mostly together. Recent trips have included white water canoeing, a weekend climbing in the Peak District and mountain biking in Thetford Forest.
A typical evening could include anything from wide games to cook offs to falconry to first aid training. Having once even run a fashion show there’s not much we won’t have a try at!
Here are some of the things we’ve done recently:
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!
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!
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!!!