Cranham Scout Group

Today, the cubs met at the County Scouting Centre in Cranham for a go on the Challenge Course. This is an assault course set up along the Cranham stream, with plenty of opportunities to get wet and muddy!

Because the site wardens were worried it might be a bit slippery with the recent rains, Akela went first. The narrow balance beam across the stream was the slipperiest riskiest part, but everybody made it across without disaster; the hardest part turned out to be the monkey swing across the stream, which many became stuck half way along! But after everyone had had a trial run, we upped the excitement with a timed trial.

The only person to get really wet was the one who fell from the monkey bars straight into the stream, who was wet from head to toe, but still cheerful and unbruised!

As with everything we do at the County Scouting Centre, it was a great success with all the children!

Then the Scouts did a good turn for the school. The school has kindly let us use their computers on several occasions to work on IT badges, so we were happy to have a chance to repay that kindness by helping to clear the playground. Weeds spring up along the edges of the tarmac and fallen leaves accumulate in odd corners, turning into a thick mess, so an intrepid group set out to help clear it all up. Well done everyone!

We survived!

Over the bank holiday weekend, we took ten Cubs, four Scouts, and (I think?) three Beavers to the Stroud and Tetbury District Centenary Camp. There were 400+ children from the entire District there, most camping but some just coming for the days. We had three leaders camping over with the Cranham Cubs and Scouts, another came with the Beavers for one day, and we had two parents who came and helped on some of the days (Thanks!).

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Today, the Cubs went into the Cranham woods to collect fallen branches, and then constructed a shelter.

The challenge is to build a structure that will keep the wind and rain out, purely with the materials available, and no tools.

We found a sturdy tree, then leant intertwined forked branches against it to establish a solid anchor for one end of a long branch, the other end of which went into the ground, creating the main beam of the shelter. Other long branches were then laid with one end resting on the beam and the other end on the ground uphill, then less sturdy branches laid crosswise on top, interlocking with the stronger ones, to produce the roof. Weaving the branches amongst each other locks them together, creating a stronger structure.

Alas, there were not many fallen branches with leaves on, so we had to roof it with the plentiful stickweed that was spreading around the area. A dense mat of leaves on top encourages the rain to run off rather than soaking through; the tiny leaves of the stickyweed were not ideal for this, but the way it all stuck together would probably be a lot better than nothing.

Thankfully, it did not rain, so we did not have to find out.

The Scouts were down to be doing camp cooking today, but they were excited by the sound of the Cub’s shelter building, so we took them to the same spot in the woods. One group cooked outside the Cub’s shelter, while the other group used the spare wood left over by the Cubs to start work on a second shelter. It fell slightly afoul of the second system effect; they wanted to make a bigger one than the Cubs made, but with a smaller team (most were cooking) it wasn’t quite finished by the time we had to head back; the structure was all in place, but the stickyweed roofing was only partially done. The pasta dish the others cooked on our Trangia stoves, however, was delicious.

This week, the Cubs tried out the new horizontal traversing wall at Gloucestershire County Scouting Centre, conveniently located in Cranham.

A traversing wall is a good activity, since it builds on the skills of indoor climbing, but since the objective is to get along the wall rather than up the wall, and there is never more than a metre’s drop to the soft ground, there is no need for complex safety ropework, and no fears of heights to overcome.

We started with a practice climb, then split into two groups for a timed competition (well, if you made it all the way along the wall your score was based on your time; otherwise it was based on how far you managed to get!).

After sorting the results by time, then adding those who didn’t get all the way onto the end of the rankings sorted by distance attained, then computing the average ranking position for each Six (thus compensating for the differing numbers of Cubs from each Six present), the overall results were:

1. Blue six
2. Yellow six
3. White six

We awarded a point to Blue and half a point to Yellow, but since one of the Yellows made a stunning performance of confidence and skill by crossing the entire wall in just over thirty seconds (the next best was over a minute), we gave them an extra half point on top.

Then the Scouts, preparing for the upcoming Cranham Paper Boat Race, experimented with some paper catamaran designs, producing several prototypes and testing them.

I’ve had a lot of questions from parents, so here are some answers:

1) Will there be an information meeting for parents?

Yes. This coming Wednesday, 7:15pm onwards, in the Village Hall. We have one of the Camp organisers coming, and he should be able to answer any question you might have.

2) What will the sleeping arrangements be?

As per regulations, there will be separate boys and girls tents. There won’t be any adults in the tents with the children (that’s prohibited under child protection rules). The Cranham Cubs will have their own set of tents, so they’ll be together. Sarah and I will be in an adjacent tent, and the children instructed to feel free to awaken us in the night if they so desire. We will therefore have familiar adults of both genders to hand.

3) What will the general supervision be during the day?

I will be with the pack, ideally accompanied by two parent helpers. If we don’t get enough parent helpers agreeing to come, I’ll be borrowing leaders from the camp administration team as required, which will be less good. So please volunteer to come and help!

4) What is the general timetable?

The precise timings will only be laid down once the consent forms are all in so the final numbers can be worked out.

However, they’ll be roused from bed around 7:30am, and sent to bed around 10pm, with silence on camp from 11pm onwards.

The Pack arrive Friday night, where there will be an opening ceremony and general settling in.

Then Saturday and Sunday consist of activities. There will be all sorts of activities laid out, and the pack will (as a unit) follow a timetable set out for them, visiting the activities in turn. They and I will have copies of this, which means there should be no timetable confusions as we had with St. George’s Day!

5) What is there for parent helpers to do?

Well, for a start, I’d like one at least, ideally two, to help supervise the Pack when they’re not on camp activities. This will mean helping to organise getting them up / washed / fed in the mornings, lunchtime, dinnertime, and keeping them entertained in free periods. I will be OK supervising them during the activities since there will be activity staff at each station and I really just need to keep an eye on them, so during this time, parent helpers will be most welcome helping with the activities.

6) What will the ratio of adults to children be?

Even if no parent helpers come along from Cranham, I’m told the ratio for the entire camp will still be within regulations, but I would like to have one Cranham adult per six Cranham Cubs as a minimum.

7) What will they be fed?

We had a run-through of the proposed menu at the Leader’s Meeting, but we didn’t copy it down into our notes in detail - it was generally traditional hearty camp food, with vegetarian options, and any dietary intolerances the team are informed of via the medical forms will be catered for. It was particularly noted that fresh fruit would be made generally available, and there would be drinks stations for refreshment throughout the days.

What if my child is nervous about sleeping over, can they just come for the day?

I think this should be acceptable. I will check with the organisers, but the rush to get medical/consent forms in is to make sure the caterign team can handly any intolerances and so that overall numbers are known, so I suspect that Cubs opting to stay at home and be ferried in for the days won’t be a problem (even at the eleventh hour).

9) I’m worried that I can’t come on site to settle my child in

Please understand, that’s a security measure - all the enlisted adult helpers will be issued with camp neck scarves and wristbands as identification, and the camp wardens will rapidly approach anybody not so adorned and question what they’re doing there. So the best way to be around to help your child settle in is to enlist as an adult helper - then you can be on hand for them, you won’t be worrying about them, and we’ll have a helper. Which is a win all round!

10) Is there an emergency contact number?

From what I understand of normal camp regulations there will be a camp emergency contact number issued to you all, but just in case, I will give you all my mobile number. I’ll be keeping it charged and switched on, and I hope there will be reception at the site.

Today, the Cubs’ focus was fitness. The Fitness Challenge badge requires, amongst other things, that they show an improvement in a fitness activity over a six-week period, so we started with a relay race between the sixes as an opportunity for them to compete in teams, then gave them some practice at twirling hula hoops (borrowed from our kind Beaver leader, Jacqui). When we next have an opportunity to pursue fitness, we will have a competition as to who can twirl for the longest without tiring, which will go on file so we can try again six weeks later and see who has improved…

Then we finished going through the available activity badges, gathering votes on who would like to do what. I will examine these this weekend to decide what we will do in the badge evenings scheduled for later in the term. Some of the badges are mainly “do something at home then bring in evidence and demonstrate in front of the group”, so for the popular ones of those, we will issue take-home sheets detailing the requirements, and we can arrange the demonstrations for the badge evenings. This is good, since it will allow the Cubs to cover a diverse range of badges guided by their own interests.

Then the Scouts discussed and considered renewable energy sources, while pairs of them came out to remove, discuss, and re-attach the battery of our van, towards their Mechanics badges. Thankfully, the van still worked afterwards.