Hello Everybody
This weekend was my second meeting with my Jamboree unit and once again I had a fantastic time, have made some amazing memories and new friends! The meeting was a weekend camp at the Quarries campsite in Milton Keynes and although most people already had, this was the first time I had camped with the unit.
Misjudging the time it would take to travel to the site, Jenny and I arrived at 8.30 on Saturday morning, half an hour before we were meant to. But soon everyone congregated, ready to move all the food, tents, equipment and personal kit to our site. It didn't take too long to set up the camp, with everyone getting stuck in and helping put up the mess tent that was supposedly similar to the ones available at the last Jamboree.
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| Our campsite |
After a short break and arranging ourselves into 4 patrols, as we will have when we go to Japan, the day properly began. Arts and crafts was first on the agenda and we were given 3 creative projects to complete before lunch. My group began making dream catchers, and the fact I haven't done arts and crafts for about 5 years is evident when looking at my final creation, which looks more like a fish than a dream catcher. . .
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| My unfortunate looking dream catcher |
Having embarrassed myself enough making the dream catcher, I moved on to origami. I was actually really impressed with my two paper models, a lotus flower and peace crane. If you remember from my first post, I mentioned my road kill goose version of the traditional crane, this time it was a lot lot better . The wings even flapped !
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| Origami lotus and peace crane |
Despite my success making origami, it all went down hill when I attempted to make a wind chime. The less said about it the better.
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| It doesn't even chime |
After a cuppa soup for lunch, the unit was required to help out with some work on the site. We had to collect rocks to support the embankments in the car park, so formed a long chain and with beautiful renditions of Disney songs performed by Lydia and Chris, managed to move a decent sized pile of rocks from one end of the site to the other.
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| Slave labour ? |
I've always loved a bit of pioneering, so making and racing A-Frames was right up my street. At scouts, square lashings were my specialty, and I'd like to think that they were what helped my team win the highly competitive A- Frame race.
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| A-Frame Racing |
A group then went to prepare and make dinner whilst the rest of us used the A-frames to construct a real sized version of the gateway we hope to make for our site in Japan. Turns out making a fortress with towers and walkways is a lot easier said than done but our finished version did the job and we had a laugh building it.
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| I'm on the frame at the back doing one of my famous square lashings |
After my very Japanese dinner of chilli con carne, we sat round the campfire while the girl guides sung and danced to multiple, very repetitive, but entertaining campfire songs. It made me realise how few I actually knew aside from "I love the flowers, I love the daffodils". Our leader, Stu , also received a late birthday present from the unit consisting of a lovely pair of girl guiding wellies !
In order to condition us to the routine of the Jamboree, we had to be up by 6.00 am on Sunday morning ready to start the day. I was part of the cooking group and due to the vast amount of bacon and not very hot gas stoves it took us over an hour to get breakfast cooked. However, the combination of cold, tiredness and camp conditions meant the breakfast went down a storm with all the food disappearing.
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| It tasted better than it looks ! |
Another craft activity was on the cards for Sunday morning but luckily it involved lashings and rope so the final product was not too bad !
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| My Crucifix creation |
Having taken the tents down and disassembled the gateway, we began our Easter themed activities. The first of which was the egg toss. In pairs we had to pass an egg to each other unaware of whether it was hard boiled or not, until we dropped it. Ours landed on the grass after only a couple of passes , and the mystery was solved . . .
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| Evidently not hard boiled |
We finished the weekend off with an egg and scavenger hunt around the campsite with a Jamboree twist. Each of the chocolate eggs had a Japanese city name on and we had the challenge of matching them to the appropriate letter on a map of Japan. We also had to find something beginning with every letter of the alphabet from around the site and the woods by it. Using our excellent biology knowledge , we even found something beginning with X , the xylem of a plant ! We also had a quick game of Frisbee in which I managed to hit someone dead in the nose, sorry Adam but I've already had my face hit by flying objects . . .
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| Frisbee time |
As a unit, we decided on our final logo for our badge designs. We still haven't come up with a name but at least we've made progress on the identity front.
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| Our Badge design |
So, with our pockets full of chocolate eggs and the smell of campfire smoke in our hair, the weekend ended. This weekend we have built a gateway , broken eggs and become even closer as a unit as well as having so much fun and working as a team. I can see us becoming even better friends when we are organised into patrols with PL's and APL's at our next meeting in June.
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| Unit 8 |
Off topic now, but I'd like to say thank you to everyone who has read my blog and shown an interest in what I'm doing, I reached 500 views the other day which is really exciting as I thought no one would actually want to read it. If you have any questions or suggestions about what future blog posts should be about, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom, I'd love to hear from you !
Thanks for reading
Lauren :)
