Beaver/Cub/Scout Volunteering

Starting back this week.   As often the case a few parents that help have moved up to cubs,  so I’m sticking with beavers and have plans to after my daughter moves up next year.   I’ll stay for my youngest and ….. well I like the leaders for the beavers much more!

I did something like 40 to 44 badges over the summer.   There was a moment where I questioned myself why I sew them!  The 7yo now has as many badges on her blanket as the 9yo as all her Rainbows badges have been moved to it.   It does make a nice record of their achievements.

I’m keen to find out how many of the Beavers have completed the 6 weeks pokemon collection challenge I set them (and might have learnt some map reading skills by osmosis).  My own kids are still addicted, the 9yo having done the 3 months for the cubs collecting badge I hoped I might get some relief but no….’Pokemon walks’ are still a feature!

Doing Fire Safety with the Cubs this week. Anyone got any good activities (that ideally do not result in a trip to A&E)?

Contact your local fire station and see if they’ll give you a tour. We go to ours every couple of years. They do a talk about what to do in the event of a fire then let the kids sit in the vehicles and have a go on a hose.

Contact your local fire station and see if they’ll give you a tour. We go to ours every couple of years

Definitely this – quite a good one to fill a dark winters evening according to our leaders.* We also usually then link it with evenings with Police and Ambulance/First Aid, but we have leaders who are PCSOs and paramedics.

* and guaranteed attendance from loads of parent helpers!

Yes the kids love the fire station tour and the crews are normally very happy to oblige.  We’ve had pcso’s come and talk safety too.  The beavers loved the siren in the car ….. the neighbours less so.

Just got back from a weekend at Hollinwood. If you are after a back woods site with PROPER TOILETS! I’d recommend it. The weather helped!

https://www.hollinwoodcamp.org.uk/

Has anyone been to Blakedean Hostel?

https://penninecalder.org.uk/blakedean/

Can you get up to Top Withens on a T0? It is within height boundaries, was worried about access to habitation/roads inside 30 minutes.

Ooh, tell me more about Hollinwood, we’re looking to do a survival camp next year. I looked on the website but there’s not a lot of information on there.

Website is a little out of date. Toilets only went in about 6 weeks ago. Think welfare unit in a shipping container.

Site consists of a toilet block, a water point, a wood pile and trees. That’s about it.

Ideal for back woods type stuff. We had a parachute up and the older kids in hammocks, whilst the new ones were in tents.

We covered the Naturalist badge.

We did our Survival Camp at Bibby’s Farm. Which is great, but the kids knew that if they walked out of the woods they’d find two toilet blocks, washing up facilities, farm buildings, climbing wall, go-kart track and a tuck shop that could sell them all sorts of tat.

It they left the woods here they would find… more woods.

It “felt” more isolated as there were no distractions.

I left my “Merlin” App running for 10 minutes and got 10 different bird species. One of the kids spotted a badger and we took some plaster casts of animal tracks. They also have beehives on site, so we watched the bees doing what bees do. Lots of spiders and beetles too.

One of the kids spotted a badger

You want to come to Linnet Clough, they’ll be spotting badgers in their tents 🙂

Ours still talk about the fateful camp where one of the boys’ tents got no sleep as they spent the whole night keeping the badger(s) out. The fact that the badger(s) wanted to come in was nothing to do with liberal carpeting of their tent with crisp crumbs, obviously….

a tuck shop that could sell them all sorts of tat.

We did a camp near Stone in the summer (Kibblestone?) and one of the lads came back from the tuck shop with, I kid you not, five metres of bubblegum

We’ve had Badger Raids at Linnet too. We told them not to leave food about. Did they listen? No.

All part of the fun I suppose.