• Andy   (Patrol leader)
• Simon   (Assistant Patrol Leader) 
• Chip  (a.k.a  Neil)
• Charlie
• Stephen
• Dom

Well, first of all the expedition went smoothly. Too smoothly. I can say that now as there is nothing left to jinx. The only eventful thing that happened was Rob trying to break his toe and me trying to break my knees.

Anyway, we all met at Fareham train station at half past eight on Saturday. The weather was sunny but very cold. We went inside and bought the train tickets to Winchester. We waited for 20 minutes and the train came. We had to change at Southampton but the connecting train only took 10 minutes to arrive. When we arrived at Winchester, we started the hike and came across one of many hills in the day. After hiking down a footpath through a few housing estates we reached the country roads. It was pretty uneventful and we stopped for lunch in a wooded area. After lunch, we were mucking about and I started to chase Rob. He tripped over a tree stump and fell over whilst stubbing his toe. Of course, it was my fault (in a joking way) that he wasn’t looking where he was going because I was chasing him. After much persuasion, he came to the idea that it was an accident and wasn’t my fault. We carried on down to the campsite with Rob hobbling along. When we reached the footpath we were meant to take, we were very near to the campsite. We came to a steep hill and whilst descending it, I stood on a rock hidden by leaves and fell over on my knees which also landed on rocks. It was very funny although I couldn’t quite work out whether I was crying in pain or laughter. When we got to the campsite, the gate was locked with a coded padlock. As instructed, we phoned the warden but there was no reply. We tried several times but each time there was no reply. As there was no one else at the campsite, we decided to climb over and set up camp. We put up the tent and got some wood to start a fire. It took a while to light but once it got going we shoved some palettes on it to keep it going. Dave popped down to the campsite to bring us some water and a sledge hammer - the water because the water system at the campsite was a bit dodgy and a sledge hammer to break up the palettes. We enjoyed a supper of hot dogs, noodles and chocolate mini rolls. We sat around the fire and eventually went to bed.

After a freezing cold night, we plucked up the courage to get out of our warm sleeping bags. The bacon was cooked, we ate bacon sandwiches and tried to make toast; and failed miserably. We packed up and started day two of the hike. Many hills and kilometers passed and we eventually arrived in Winchester. We broke for lunch and pushed on for the last part of the hike. When we got to train station, we got the tickets and luckily there was a train in the station to Southampton so we got on. We had to change at Southampton again but unfortunately the connecting train wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another 40 minutes. The time passed and we got back to Fareham at about 4pm. We walked back to the scout hut and hung up the tent.

Thank you very much to Joe, Rob and Spud for a great weekend - I hope you enjoyed it too.