Cranham Scout Group

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, we had a special event for the Cubs, due to our attempts at organising a visit to the recycling centre falling through. Luckily, the excellent facilities of the Gloucestershire County Scout Centre are conveniently located in the village!

Nine cubs and one Scout (an honorary Cub for the day) came to the event. The weather was lovely, with warm sunshine.

We started with outdoor archery, then headed out into the woods for orienteering. The cubs took turns to navigate to each point, to allow them to develop navigational skills. Disaster struck when one of the markers went missing; we found the tree it had been tied to, but there was no sign of it… However, we quickly made up for it by using a protruding branch on the tree it had been tied to to mark our sheets instead. We stopped in a pleasant clearing for lunch, before continuing to the final marker, then back to the car park for pickup.

Everybody seemed to have a good time! And our thanks go out to the parents who stayed to help.

Today, we took the Scouts on a night hike in the woods behind Cranham and along a section of the Cotswold Way.

We ran out of time beforehand explaining navigation and route planning, so I ended up doing the navigation - it looks like we’ll need to have some “classroom” sessions explaining all that in more detail before we try it again!

Luckily we had an adult helper who knew the Cotswold Way well, so we weren’t just relying on my map reading to prevent us getting lost, and we managed to all get back on time!

Over the weekend, we took the Cubs and Scouts on their first camp in the Herefordshire village of Moccas!

This was organised by the leaders of Wycliffe Scout Group, since the new Cranham leaders have not yet had Nights Away training, so Cranham and Wycliffe camped together.

The Scouts slept in tents, while the cubs slept in Moccas Village Hall. The theme for the cubs was ‘Space’.

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Today was the Cub and Scout district swimming gala, at the GL1 pool in Gloucester.

Cranham had both a cub team and a scout team. The cub team, alas, came ninth out of nine despite putting in a good effort, while the scout team (with only three members instead of four, one of whom was a cub standing in as a scout!) came second!

We now have two certificates - we just need a Scout noticeboard in the Village Hall to put them on…

At last, after two postponements due to (firstly) a technical problem with the pool and (secondly) somebody earlier in the day having a ‘little accident’ in the water and leaving a horrible mess, we have finally had the swimming badge assessment!

Swimming is a ’staged’ badge in Scouting. Staged badges are the same across all sections, since they come in stages (numbered 1 to 5), each reflecting a different level of ability. So today we have Beavers, Cubs, and Scouts all in the pool together swimming lengths, treading water, and diving for bricks and so on.

Cranham had quite a lot of entrants in both stages, since being new none of ours had done them in previous years. I eagerly await the results, but for the few activities I was directly overseeing, I don’t think any of ours failed anything!

This just in from the organisers:

Full list is still to be issued but winners were

1 Cranham A
2 Severnside 1
3 Randwick Revellers
4 Nailsworth B

Uh… does that mean we won?!?