Summer Camp
At the start of the school summer holidays, 14 Scouts, 13 Explorers and 14 leaders loaded up the minibuses and the trailer and set off for Forest Camp near Northwich for our first outdoor camp in nearly 2 years!
We camped for 4 nights and enjoyed a great variety of activities, working towards some badges at the same time. We did archery in the forest, experimenting with how far we could stand from the targets and still hit them. We kayaked and paddled on the site’s lake, working on our “Time on Water” and “Paddlesports” badges. Of course, really all the Scouts wanted to do was capsize! We hiked around the local area, passing fields of wheat and cows, practising our map reading skills and stuffing straw into each other’s rucksacks. We traversed the low ropes course, climbing through rope nets, around large dangling balls and along wires.
In the evenings, there were several campfires complete with all Longford’s favourite party games; including black magic and “crossed or uncrossed” (ask your resident Scout or Explorer to show you these!).
Despite the terrible weather forecast, we had 3 days of glorious sunshine before the rain finally hit with a vengeance on Tuesday evening. Still, what’s camp without a bit of rain?!
Wednesday was the last day and we rounded off the week with a trip to a local aqua park, featuring huge inflatable obstacles floating on a lake that can be climbed, bounced on and mostly fallen off of. Apparently this was so good that several people began making plans to return with their families! And then we were back at the Ranche, hanging all the tents up and already eagerly anticipating the next outdoor camp!
Cooking on Fires
For our first week back at Scouts after Summer what better an activity than cooking on fires. The Scouts prepared the wood they needed for the fires and lit them in readiness to cook burgers - yum! To embed camp skills we all cooked on frying pans. An important thing about cooking on open fires is rubbing a layer of washing up liquid on the outside as this will make it easier to get the soot off when washing up.
We proceeded to cook our burgers on the fires and then the best was we got to eat them with lashes of tomato kethcup!
Once we finished cooking it was time to get the brillos out until they were shiny clean and no dirt left on them - cleanliness is especilaly important when we are on camp!
Run Scouts Run!!
This week our superpurb young leaders took charge of our Scout group to run some outdoor athletics activities in the glorious sun; we've been been so lucky with how sunny it has been recently, and it's been outstanding to make the most of the warmth. Scouts took part in a multitude of activities from furious shotput, high adrenaline spriting, and the discus. We're very proud of the attempts everyone made and have all taken important steps towards archiving their Athletics and Athletics Plus badges!
Scouts | Arts O'Clock
What a fantastic few weeks of nature based art have taken place all over Longford Park. Over the past three weeks we've been challenging our members to get their creative juices flowing and sure the world around them to design their own masterpiece worthy of the Lourve! We absolutely love the designs which were made to create our own living Longford sign. Well done all!
Scouts Assault Course
Last week our scouts took part in a rigorous assault course.
Whether it was ramps, nets, crawling or a dastardly dice throw that can affect your whole time, our scouts were tested on their speed and agility in this quick 3 minute assault course.