I was recently challenged to come up with a list of things I’d take camping, but only things that began with the first letter of my name. Which of course is E for Explorer, or is it Eighty Four?
It was harder than I thought but here are my top 25 items:
Emergency Blanket
Extra Thick Socks
Earmuffs
Eurohike Tent (other tents are also available)
Envelope
Equipment
Eye drops
Ear plugs
Eiderdown
Espadrilles
Elephant dung (dried)
Entertainment system
England’s Glory Matches (other brands are also available, just not starting with an E)
Email
Energiser Batteries (or maybe Every Ready, still taking bids for product placement on this one)
Electric toothbrush
Elf on the shelf.
Emery board
Edam, eggs, enchiladas, escallops and other edibles.
Unfortunately this is not another snow camp unlike the beast from the east but it was another camping trip.
I went camping last weekend with my friend who I hadn’t camped with for a couple of years. It was nice to catch up and because we were the only ones from our unit, we made friends with other explorer groups in our county. I saw my Jamboree friends as well, who as well as I were taking a well deserved break from fundraising.
On the Friday evening I failed at circus skills but instead aced a game of cards. Followed by a disco, to then finally fall asleep at 1am the next morning.
The next day we could choose which activities we wanted to do. I did archery, rifle shooting, caving, a blind folded trail, tomahawks, arts and crafts, laser tag, bushcraft and many more.
The evening entertainment consisted of a silent disco where half the room would be dancing to the cha cha slide and the other half of the room would be singing and dancing along to YMCA. This finished gone midnight so yet again, I finally fell asleep at 1.
The final day consisted of rain and more rain – luckily this hadn’t been over the whole weekend. I did some more arts and craft by building a tower from spaghetti and sweets, did some archery and played some more cards. I went home having had an amazing time and meeting some amazing new friends.
I have been on another training camp with my Jamboree unit last weekend. On the Friday night, we travelled up on the minibus, jamming out to music for 2 hours and catching up with one another.
We arrived at the campsite after pulling down a very very bumpy lane. Once the minibus had parked up, we were told by one of our leaders that there were no proper toilets – instead it was a wooden shed with a hole in the ground which fed the soil. In the dark I was not prepared for all the spiders I was going encounter especially after Strategy.
State of the art toilet facility!
Before we set up our tents, we had to help the rest of our unit put up the cooking tents and say hello again. Apart from the disaster of me not being able to find my spare batteries and then finding them in the only pocket I hadn’t looked in I could help. We then got to set up our own tents before sitting around the campfire.
Pretty Fire
Around the campfire we had an introduction where we got new numbers to call out when someone would shout ‘number off’ and we’d count in order our new number. We got put into our patrols for the weekend and agreed on a time to wake up and start to light a fire to cook on.
I woke up on time to meet with my patrol to collect fire wood and start the fire. We collected lots and lots of wood as there is no such thing as having too much wood and we started cooking once the fire got hot enough. We cooked the eggs first, then some veggie sausage on a giant saucepan until I found a smaller saucepan so we could start the bacon. I was on putting the bacon onto the frying pan duty and saved my egg to have a bacon and egg buttie. Our patrol then washed up and gathered with other patrols, 20 minutes late, for flag break.
We would be doing 4 rota activities in the morning including; social media, personal hygiene, airport security and washing.
At the social media station we learnt about how landscape should be the natural photo shot with the photo not being staged and hence natural. So, our task was to take natural photos of the other groups without disturbing them.
At the personal hygiene station we learnt that our main goals would be to be happy whilst keeping clean by washing our hands and to always tell a leader if something is wrong. Our task was to be blindfolded with paint on our hands and to wash it off and to stop when we thought they were clean.
At the airport security station we had to work out what items we would be able to take in our holdall going to the USA from the UK and visa versa. I learnt that you can only take liquids of 100ml and your water bottle has to be empty when taking it through security.
Clean as clean can be
Finally at the washing station we had to make our t-shirts muddy and then cleaned them. First we rinsed them to get the majority of dirt out and off of them and then we used hot water with washing powder to wash our t-shirts and then rinsed them in cold water again. We then wrung out excess water and hung them up to dry and went to get lunch.
After lunch we got set the challenge to decide on what our patrol wanted for tea and decide on 2 people to go shopping whilst the rest of the patrol helped with the big bonfire/ campfire we would be having in the evening. By a fair game of rock, paper, scissors it was decided that I and a other person would go shopping. So, with our shopping list and £25 we checked the kitchen pantry and went to catch the minibus to the supermarket.
Look what we foraged!
After a quick stop to a scout hut to get extra utensils on the way, we arrived at Asda to go shopping. We got our trolley and were off. We met the vlogging patrol with their body camera and compared our shopping trollies. My patrol’s trolley contained; pasta, carbonara sauce, bacon, muffins, fizzy drinks and cheese. The other patrol’s trolley contained vegetables and noodles for their stir fry.
Not Spag Bol!
Once finished, we travelled back on the minibus to see the others had built a huge campfire whilst we had gone. As soon as we got back we started cooking our tea. Everyone wanted some of our carbonara and we served many of the VIPs who joined us. There was plenty to share round. We then washed up and headed over to camp break to finish the evening, to name our mascot bear and to play a few games.
After the games we had our massive campfire which the circumference was the size of a trampoline and the height of a traffic light. It went from freezing cold to boiling hot in the split of a second. We then did our sketches in our patrols as well as our campfire song.
The next morning we cooked pancakes with bacon and went full out on toppings. We then broke camp and had campflag where we were told we’d have to walk to the village hall to listen to the parents’ meeting. It wasn’t a long journey walking and we listened to the meeting while eating homemade cake. We said goodbye to our friends from the other county and then we were back on the minibus home – where we stopped off at the services on the way back quickly. We arrived back in our own county and went back our separate ways after our karaoke session in the minibus.
Blue helping with the washing
Our mascot’s official name is now Blue – in the photo you can see Blue having a go at hand washing our clothes.
Another weekend and another camp to recover from!
