The Fifth has doubled in size in 10 years and, to match the growth, we have had to buy an awful lot of kit. We welcomed girls in 2007 and that meant we needed more new tents, toilets and changing areas. We are careful with your money and we shop around for months to find the best deals for The Fifth. How about some examples?
Tag: iscout Page 10 of 11
An excellent turnout from the explorers who got all their kit out ready for a weekend at gilwell. Thus will include 24hrs of continuous activities from Saturday to Sunday
checking they have all the poles for the mess tent.
They can be genuinely useful! It makes Phil’s job much easier when they all muck in.
The hut is a hive of activity with John and Oliver building 8 new benches for camp. They are only bickering a little but over measurements and there’s been no metric v imperial confusion yet!
measure twice, cut once
these are a third the price of go pak benches
bzzzzzzzzzz
Sun was shining so we built catapults tonight to fire water-soaked sponges at each other.
John explained what to do to 5 team leaders
More pics to follow on the photo website.
Do you know what the worst job for a leader is? It’s telling kids that they can’t join the group.
Click the image to see our growth since 2002
We refuse a couple of kids per week and we hate it. Our waiting list is not something to be proud of. It doesn’t show how succesful we are, it just shows that there are dozens of kids who don’t have the benefit of all the fun, friendship and adventure that they deserve.
We know this. We do our best to get as many kids in as possible. Â We’ve nearly doubled in size in ten years.
We could open a new beaver colony, cub pack and scout troop tomorrow with the numbers on the list. Isn’t that awful? we have just taken 8 kids from the list into cubs and that gives us 165 youth members but we have another 96 kids aged from 6 to 14 who want to get in.
Have you seen this? It’s rather good
[youtube clip_id=”cOM1n22XyHA” height=”” width=”640″]
We’ll keep trying to grow. We’ll keep recruiting adults and we’ll keep offering everyday adventure to as many kids as possible. Â For now, click on the tab marked links at the top of the page and you can choose to see the waiting list policy on there.
We have brought our Tilley lamps back to life. Each of these is worth £120.
All they needed was a bit of TLC and some new washers.
They run on paraffin and that is much cheaper than gas so it will save us a fortune (a couple of hundred quid this summer).
They give a lovely soft light and keep their pressure for 2 or 3 hours before they need pumping again.
Oliver has been scrubbing them until they shine.
and the glass has been dishwashed
we found 2 more at the end of the day!
this lamp was old when john joined the group in 1969
And now we just have to teach the scouts how to light them!
I dropped by to visit the explorers while they were setting up their hammocks for the night
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- The first one up,
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- Sooooo comfortable
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- Rob working on his knots. He must have had an awful scout leader… (gulp… oh the shame)
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- Backwoods cooking for dinner. Stew in a bag.
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- Nick lets his knots take the strain.
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- Looking good, although maybe the tarp is a bit high.
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- Sean loves his hammock
I popped by the hut and found these two hard at work
well-earned cuppa
Each of those lamps would cost 120 quid new and we have 13 of them.
So it’s well worth getting them working again.
How about some facts and figures? Camping is the best thing that we do in scouts and we recognise that with badges for the young people as they move through the sections.
2,464 nights away among our 155Â under 18s
That’s nearly 7 years away.
Between the cubs scouts and explorers:
- only 5 young people have not been on a residential experience with us (and of those 5, 3 joined this term)
- all the explorers have been on a residential.
- I don’t include the beavers in this bit because they have 12 who do not have nights away badges but Badger and Squirrel have a sleepover planned next month
29 beavers – 17 have a nights away badge
and a sleepover is planned in July so that will round up the rest of them
- 11 have 2 or more
Cub Camp 2012 Group Picture
41 cub – 38 have a nights away badge
- 32 have 5 or more
- 14 have 10 or more
55 scouts – 53 have a nights away badge
- 40 have 5 or more
- 38 have 10 or more
- 19 have 20 or more
- 3 have 35 or more
Switzerland Trip 2011 Group Photo
31 explorers – all 31 have a nights away badge
- 29 have 5 or more
- 25 have 10 or more
- 22 have 20 or more
- 12 have 35 or more
- 9 have 50 or more
- 7 have 75 more
- 1 has 121 nights away
And every single one of these has been run by our 100% volunteer team of leaders
The scouts brought their props and they’re making their videos.
and we even managed to show them their videos before they went home
