Avon Jamboree 2011

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Avonasaurus World Scout Jamboree Unit - Sweden 2011



On the 27th to 30th May was Avon county scouts "4 seasons Avon Jamboree" which took place between Friday and Monday.

I arrived, after queuing in traffic for over an hour, at the campsite at about 5:30 on the Friday where me and Tom, who was travelling with me met Simon who is our troop leader who directed us up to the explorer sub camp where we met Kimbo and set up our tents. We then met up with Alex who is one of the young leaders with my scout troop.
Gradually more people arrived and set up their tents in our small patch of land and then me and Alex went and visited the 28th, our troop, who all looked very board and called us traitors.
When we got back we were issued wristbands and harlequin neckers and were told that we would be preforming at the opening ceremony the next morning so, after choosing the two songs that we would play, "all the small things" and "i'm yours", we went to the explorer sub camp mess tent, set up our instruments, loaded the words onto our phones, and sang and played! Whilst we played, various people from around the site who could hear us came in including Hannah and James who are also leaders at our troop and became camp photographers and various video's were projected onto the tent roof.
We then got the words for the songs printed out so that everyone could learn them and I had my dinner before visiting the now extremely board 28th and going to bed. We were also told by Kevin that our JTV video (see previous post) was taken by the UK contingent to the all leaders weekend in Sweden and was shown to every adult going to the Jamboree including the king of Sweden, who is also the head of international scouting, who liked it so much that he's asked for us to make another one.

The next morning we had a quick cooked breakfast before taking all the instruments down to the main tent with the stage in and setting up there. I set up Kevin's video camera to record the performance so that we could add it into our next JTV video. The other scouts were then allowed into the large tent and the opening ceremony went on with Peter Carnegie (camp chief), Dan Wood (the new county commissioner) and Wayne Bulpitt (UK chief commissioner) speaking and "JamboGlee" preforming brilliantly (while I recorded).
After the opening ceremony, we helped set the main tent up as the craft tent and took all the instruments back to the explorer area to lock them away and then went down to the main filed for the activities. These included Zorbing, obstacle course, ice skating, scuba diving, shooting, archery, canooeing, inflatables and many, many more. We did the activities until 13:00 when we went up for lunch where we had a talk from Rex who started scouting in Avon but now works with Swedish scouts and is one of the top organizers for the Swedish jamboree and told us about the jamboree, the site, previous Swedish jamborees and loads more interesting and useful information.We then did more activities (that afternoon it was our priority (we got to skip the cue on all the most popular activities)) before dinner which was at about 6. We then surprised Kathryn by giving her presents and a cake seeing it was her birthday the week before which she loved. After this we went down to the main field where there was a carnival. The carnival was quite funny, especially when Kate and Dan went into the stocks to have wet sponges thrown at them. We then briefly visited the 28th and the explorer sub-camp before going back down to see the fireworks in the main field (which were very impressive ones). Afterwards there was a explorer only silent disco in the main tent. This is where everyone gets a pair of headphones and can choose to listen to one of two different DJ's and switch between them throughout the night. This was great and wen't on until midnight when we were escorted back to our tents by armed leaders wearing intense high vis jackets to make sure we didn't wake up the scouts, cubs and beavers. When I got back to my tent I found Josh already in there and instead of tidying his stuff away, he's decided to lie on top of it all.

The next morning I got up at around 8:00 and had breakfast. Kate and Emily auditioned for the "Avon's got talent" competition. We then did the activities again until just before lunch when some of us spoke to Dan Wood (county commissioner), Steve Smith (deputy county commissioner) and Gorden Weston (south west regional commissioner), before having lunch. In the afternoon we did more of the activities including the climbing wall.
The explorers then all met in the main activities field where we were told that we could go on most of the activities for an extra two hours after they were meant to close.
We did this and then went up to the explorer
area for dinner. Kate, Emily and Dan had all got through to the final of Avon's got talent so after dinner I grabbed the video camera and found a good spot on a chair at the very back on the raised platform for the lighting desk where I got a great view of all the acts. I spoke to James (a leader from the 28th) who was taking photos of it at the back whilst Simon was one of the judges. Kate played the saxophone, Dan did the diabalo and Kate and Emily sang - they were all really good. The judges went away to work out the final three and when they came back they were all cheered onto the stage with the exception of Simon who was booed off (partially encouraged be me) the final three were; a cub who played the flute, another explorer who sang 'defying gravity' and Kate with her saxophone. The winner was then decided with the audience cheering and a decibel meter (or a cheap i phone app used by the guy standing next top me to be more precise) and was the girl who sang 'defying gravity'.
We then went back to the explorer area for a bit and wandered around the site (we also visited the 28th again) We then went down to the main tent where we joined in with the end of the main disco before everyone was sent out and we had another explorer silent disco which was awesome fun. We then went back up to the explorer field after it finished at midnight and Me, Kate, Garry, Sam and Harry all went into one tent to play cards and then truth or dare - truth. By the time we finished at about 01:40 we couldn't be bothered to go to our own tents so we all slept in that tent. The next morning we woke up at about 7:00 to find that the tent we were in had leaked badly as well as my tent which Tom and Josh were in (Tom had left his tent due to lack of room because about 10 people tried to sleep in a three man tent) I had a shower and then we had breakfast. We then played an awkward version of Frisbee which involved a tennis ball before a packed away my stuff and put it in Anna's tents so that I could take my tent down. We then did karaoke in the explorer tent and sold some more candyfloss (we'd been selling it all weekend during the activity times and we'd all taken turns in helping) before I said goodbye to everyone, tried to fix Josh's phone in 30 seconds (I failed :() and had to take my kit and lunch along with Tom down to Simon's land-rover ready for us to go off on another camp.

the 28th websites post on camp is available here: http://www.bathamptonscouts.org/2011/06/four-seasons-jamboree-2011/

Ten Tors 2011 - The Event

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On the 13th, 14th and 15th of may was the ten tors challenge 2011.
The  teams were picked the week before and everyone who wanted to do it made it onto the 35 team except two people, one who filled a space on our 45 team and another who joined 'sexy school's' 45 team
We arrived at bear flat and departed at about 7:10, we then went to Norton hill school because we were sharing a coach with them and headed off to oakhampton whilst on the way I texted friends who would also be taking part. We had a brief stop at exeter services and then arrived at the army base at around 10:00.
When we arrived we quickly unloaded all out kit from the coach and went through 'tent city' to where the three beechen cliff flags were - looking better than all the others!
There we met Mr Brewer and Mr Stewart, Mr Edy had travelled in the coach with us. We then went quickly to scrutineering where I saw some people I knew. Luckily because we had arrived early the cue wasn't very long and we were seen by one of the scrutineeres quite quickly. When we reached the scruitineer he gave us a full inspection (as were are a double green school, we should only have a reasonably brief scruitineering but our scrutineer made us take everything out of our bags and through it all - he even counted our water purification tablets!)
After we got scruitineering stamped on our route card, we dumped our kit at our 'base' and went to the compulsory briefing where they told us all the basic stuff - don't drop litter, motivation, etc.....
After getting briefing stamped as well we went back to our mess tent and planned our route, this didn't take too long and afterwards we went up to the start line to have a look around.
We then had dinner which comprised of pasta which had been left cooking all day with bolonaise followed by Apple pie and cold, straight out of the can custard. Afterwards we had free time until bed at ten so I spoke to a friend from wsj and another from my primary school before going to bed in anticipation....
The next morning I woke at 4:55 from Rob's alarm clock and we all waited quietly as the sun rose until 5:00 when over the camp tannoy came chariots of fire for us to wake up to. This was then followed by other inspirational music such as, we are the champions, these boots are made for walking, dancing queen? and many more. I then had a the most disgusting egg I have ever eaten in my life, and I've had lots of camp cooking (no offence Mr Stewart). We then got a scary briefing from Mr Brewer and Mr Stewart explaining how failure is not an option. We then went up to the start and the atmosphere was HUGE. We took are place  on the ring of participants and gave our flags to the teachers (we could see all our other teams because our flags were so much bigger and taller than everyone else's). Then as it approached 7:00, there was then a speech from several important people from the army and the ten tors prayer was read. Two huge guns then went off and all hell broke loose. Everyone ran down the hill at once and it was absolute chaos. We quickly got on route and headed to our first tor. The map of our route can be seen below:

On the way to our first tor I stupidly managed to loose one of my gloves within about the first five minutes. We made our way quickly to Oke tor and were the first team on our route to get there. 
We turned around quite quickly and went off down into the valley from the tor. We quickly made our way towards Shilstone tor. On the way - despite Mr Brewer warning us not to - we ended up in a huge bog, the one which someone had died in three years before! We got through it as quickly as possible but needless to say, it had slowed us down considerably. We reached Shilstone tor and were just leaving as one of the three helicopters came to land there. We were much quicker on this next leg, and stopped to collect water where we had done in the last training. About 1/3 up the next tor I realized that I had really stupidly, left the map case with all the important stuff in (route card etc...) at the bottom by the stream. I quickly chucked my bag on the floor and ran down to the bottom of the steam and luckily it was still there! I grabbed it and ran back up to the others - that was REALLY stupid of me!!!
We reached our next tor - Watern, quite quickly and were starting to catch up on the time we'd lost in bog. We then went on to Higher White tor, following the wall that runs along there which didn't take too long, although Tom started to get quite bad cramps and had to stop at lower white tor. When we got to the tor, some of us went to the loo while tom asked the army person in charge how to help the cramp, and was told to have some salt. 
We then set off to Great mis tor which was probably the hardest stretch.  It was hard because every few meters, tom would stop and just lie on the floor, stretching out the pain, screaming and shouting at us not to wait for him. The Zebra helicopter left just as we arrived. We stopped briefly but decided best to go as quickly as possible so that tom's cramp didn't start again and so that we could try and get to Staple tor (the tor after next) rather then being stopped at Black tor (our next tor). 
We went down and crossed the road near Princetown. We then followed a track almost all the way to Black tor. When we got there, we met tom and my friend - tom from jamboree We then walked with his group back up the same track until we reached the road. From there we walked down the road and filled up our water next to a small pub. We then went up a steep track until we reached Staple tor. By the time we'd arrived it was too late to go on so both our groups stayed there for the night. I started to cook everyone meals while they put up the tents. We then stuck our bags our bags in the tents and sheltered behind a rock to eat because it was VERY windy. I then had a chat with one of the RAF people (each tor was manned either by people from the army, navy or RAF and Staple tor was RAF) about vegetarian sausage and beans - breakfast. We then went to bed as soon as we had finished.

The next morning we woke up at around four. By half four we had started cooking and our tent was partially down. The other 'tent team' then got up and helped. By about 5:15am we had packed everything up and were sheltering to stay warm. We then did a litter sweep of the whole area before the army would give us our route card back (we got Tom into the front of the queue to get ours), and at exactly 6:00am, the person in charge of the tor blew his whistle and we were off - a slightly less spectacular start than the day before but good all the same. We went across the 'saddle' of a few tors and before long we had reached Lynch tor, where we met one of our 45 teams. We had a brief break here and then went on, firstly along quite a flat area, then down steeply into a valley and out the other side where the grass was so long we became completely disorientated and it took us a while just to work out which of the surrounding tors we were aiming at. Once we'd worked out which tor to head to, it didn't take us long to get to the next tor - Chat tor. We hardly stopped there, before going straight up the not so steep, hill to our 10th tor - Kitty tor. We stopped there for quite a while because we were so happy that we'd got to our tenth. We then left and went down a really steep hill, and up the other side, whilst listening to a mix of Tom's radio, the grating sound from the winder on Tom's radio and a team near us that couldn't stop arguing with each other. We then went along the top and met Mr Stewart at about 11:40am, who congratulated us and gave us a flag to carry. We then walked 'the walk of fame' down into Oakampton camp and completed the challenge and 11:50am!


Avon Scouts - Bear Hunt

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On Saturday 7th May was Avon Scouts 'bear hunt'. Simon took some scouts from Bathampton to this and many people from WSJ were also there. At the event we were lucky enough to meet chief scout - Bear Grylls and got him to sign some 'Avonasaurus' merchandise.
You can read more on what I have to say on this on the new Bathampton Scouts website which I have just finished : http://www.bathamptonscouts.org/2011/05/bear-hunt/

DofE - Camp Craft Training

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On Wednesday 4th May as part of our Duke of Edinburgh awards preparation we learnt some basic camp craft skills at Hayesfield in preparation for the following weekend of camping. I did not go on the training camp as it was the ten tors event which is much harder.