Friday night
 

After the forty five minute car journey, darkness was setting in on the New Forest. The grass was wet, leaving the conditions more difficult when putting tents up. We laid a tarpaulin out on the grass and put all of our personal kit and team kit on it so it didn’t get wet. We left half of the groundsheet empty to lay the tent on to put up. What seemed like was going to be an enjoyable weekend took a turn for the worse, already! Jake decided to come over to light his gas lamp as I had the matches. When Jake lit the match, it flared up and burnt his finger; instead of dropping it on the grass and putting it out with his shoe, he threw it towards the tent. A small trail of smoke rose into the air; I feared the worst and tried to get the match off. There on the middle of the porch roof was a hole, not a huge hole, but enough to let a lot of water through. Jake and I went up to tell Dave. As you can guess, he wasn’t best please and told us to deal with it. So I was left with a hole in the tent, all of the kit to set up whilst the other patrols nearly had their tents up. Very kindly, Mitch set his patrol some work and came over to help me.  My face brightened when Mitch told me that we had a spare Vango (the tents that we were using). We were going to use it as a store tent, but as shelter for us was more important, we didn’t go along with the store tent plan. Whilst Joe and Sam packed the other tent away, Mitch and I got the ‘store tent’ out and started to put it up. Things were looking good and I was smiling again! As there was problems with Mitch’s stove regulator, we share a stove and a dining shelter. After eating hot dogs and playing Turn that light out, we were looking forward to getting to bed.

Saturday (all day)

Waking up to the smell of bacon is always a nice feeling (unless you’re a vegetarian), for Joe and Sam that was! I was cooking whilst they were doing whatever they were doing in the tent, but I didn’t mind as I love it! We spent the morning lolly-gagging around, washing up, washing ourselves and doing some sheets in our tent such as Phonetic alphabet anagrams as the weather was not too good.Later on in the morning we did a troop activity which was animal relay. We had to have one card each which had an animal name on and how they act. We had to race the same animal from different patrols to a point on the field and back again. It was good fun and a laugh.

After that, we started on lunch. The menu was spaghetti bolognaise, made with the usual ingredients but not with a jar of sauce. I made my own sauce with chopped tomatoes and tomato puree. Lunch went well, but it took a while to wash up as we had lots of dishes and were in one area.

Later on in the afternoon, Eagles did the orienteering that Mitch had organised which consisted of compass bearings and activity sheets on the way around. That was good fun and it was fortunate that the rain and bad weather kept away.

Patrol by patrol, we did first aid with Gareth to achieve stage 2 on our first aid badges. We learnt how to treat burns and cuts which was very interesting.

Just as the weather seemed like it was going to keep of for the evening, we played a patrol team’s football game. Nearing the end of the game, the sky went dark yellow and the heavens opened. Everyone dashed to their tents until the rain eased off.

A good idea turned into a bad idea when we had a barbeque over an open fire. The rain was on and off, the sausages were dropping off and the burgers were just getting burnt! Every time a drip of fat touched the embers, the whole burger set on fire. Lovely! For desert we had toffee apples, but didn’t play the wide game we had planned as the field was extremely wet.

We had an earlier night and completed a booklet that Mitch had sorted out for us. It’s to keep a record of all of the scouts that have been in the troop. We had to write a bit about ourselves and fill in some other information about the patrol.

Sunday (rain, rain and more rain!)
           

Sunday morning was spent cooking breakfast (boiled eggs) and playing games in the rain. Mitch and I sat down for a while whilst Dom and Sam burnt bread, which I think was meant to be fried bread.

Time was ticking and the rain was getting harder; none of the kit was packed away and the parents were arriving in 30 minutes.

After getting the tents down, which were still wet, we put them along with everything in the cars and headed for the hut. As most people went home, the PL’s, Joe and Tim and some of the leaders had the task of getting the kit sorted out into patrol piles, ticking the things off and putting the wet things up to dry.

By about 5:00pm, I arrived at home, wet and miserable like everyone else.

Overall…
 

I think that the weather really spoilt the weekend. The activities that Mitch had planned for the whole troop would have gone a lot better if the sun was out and it was dry, but the weather can’t be planned; It is such a shame that the campsite was booked the weekend before! The patrol camp, originally a troop camp had too many troop activities but were planned and organised extremely well.

There will be a Pl’s meeting at the usual time and place on Monday to discuss the Pl’s Night.