gjh's blog

We haven't seen these two working together so beautifully since Cam went up to Explorers. It's nice to see the old couple back together looking after each other.

This was a shot from Games Night - the last kayak class of the season, down at Overcote. One little plug for Ben F - his first ever attempt at Eskimo Rolling happened on the same night. Ben fluffed attempt one, but succeeded on two and three, which is stunningly good.

A large number of Scouts will be receiving Scout badges on Monday to recognize their BCU qualifications at Passport and Discovery levels. Well done!

Yeah, first day hike for these guys - started in October last year, and finished last weekend. JUST inside Year 6. That's good stuff. I haven't told them yet that they're doing an overnighter as soon as they hit Year 7 in September :-)

Well done lads. Especially the completely organized without me part - I almost forgot you were going. That - that was impressive.

"How to Start Kite Surfing - Take wakeboarding, ditch the boat, add a parabolic kite tethered by 100-foot lines, toss in some wind, and you get kiteboarding, a sport born in the late 1990s that is currently exploding in popularity.
[PM Outdoor Adventures]"

Any of you guys tried this? Do we need Beach Camp???

Explorer Scouting is ambitious. Our "Panther" unit started this year and we've done a couple of camps, a cycle ride, kayak, and a trip to the Peak District, as well as a variety of weekly meetings. But this video from "Ayers ESU" shows you how high the bar is set. I want us to be this good. The only way we'll do it is for you, our highly trained Scouts, to move up and bring your skills and expertise with you. Just imagine what you could do.

Ben, Harry, Jonathan and Nick are busy acing their patrol camp right now. And it's going to put them in spitting distance of Kingfisher on Monday...

Dear Scouts,

A lot of you were really rather fabulous on Monday. With almost no direction from me, you showed people round, befriended the new guys, and showed off your fabulous Scouty Skillz. I was rather proud of you. This is a photo of the hourglass tower that Sam led - with no help at all from me - and this little team worked wonders to build it in 90 minutes. Photos of the crate stacking will come later.

I will reward your greatness with points :-)

Thankyou!
Greg

Bear Grylls has started touring the UK, and was in the NorthEast over the bank holiday weekend. (Didn't you know? We're proud to have Bear as Chief Scout of the UK.) We don't yet have his dates for East Anglia, but when we do... what are we going to organize to attract him to land his helicopter at IVC, kids? Now's the time to start thinking!!

OMG Win! Report from Andew's Mum - "16 limbs retrieved from Little Abington". It's not clear whether she bothered to count all 80 fingers and toes, so some may have been lost over the weekend. But Kingfishers basically survived the first 1st Histon Patrol Camp on record. That's 15pts per Scout, 60 in total. (Now updated.) Plus kudos. Plus points for badges, which WILL follow very soon.

Full report will follow. Just one photo for you for now; Andrew said to me "I have no idea how we broke a tent pole". The bill is in the post, mate :-)

Hey Guys - you know that Maker Faire in Newcastle? BBC did a report on it.

I kind of feel like I should say something about the swimming. Thing is, I'm not going to tell you what I decided to do about points until tomorrow at Scouts. Maybe I'm still thinking about it :-)

The heroes who turned up were Adam, Toby, James and Graeme. Well done guys. We were 4th equal in Cambridge. And Graeme and Adam, I've seen you both swim before, and the improvement was impressive. That definitely means points for Swifts, Owls and Falcons. You can see already that Owls are going to be in a strong position very soon.

What I'm not so sure about is how to reward the no-shows.... Alex H, Alex F, Nick C and Matthew C. This is a sport, kids. You're supposed to be part of a team. Turn up to play footy four men down and you might as well not turn up at all. What do YOU think I should do? Other people could have been on that team.

(Oh, and... Andrew Andrew, what happened, mate? It's all falling apart!)

See you guys tomorrow, with a morse crib sheet and bags of scavenged items!!

Note: Image does not depict any actual team member, living or dead.