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?

click to enlarge

Our cooking pots have come to the end of their lives and new ones cost nearly £40 each – we need 12 of them for summer camp but after a bit of googling, we found army surplus ones for £7.50.

With over 60 people on summer camp this year, we need more benches. 8 new GOPAK benches would cost over £500 but John and Oliver have built 8 new benches for us for under £200.

We want to start cooking in Dutch Ovens and we have been given a £250 grant from the Leslie Sell Charitable Trust to help us get started.

To get the scouts camping in hammocks, we need to buy tarpaulins, the good ones cost £35 each but we have got hold of 55 ‘seconds’ from the dealer for just £15 each.  The hammocks that the scouts will be in are part of a bulk purchase and we are getting them for £11 each.

Each scout on camp will get a spork but we found a deal that let us buy them for 33p each. We have bought enough sheaf knives for each scout on camp but we shopped around and found very good quality knives for under £3 each

Some of these tents have date stamps from the 1940s

The tents that we will use are (in some cases) over 60 years old but still waterproof and in good condition. The large trailer that we will use was funded by the Lottery, another one was built by Andy and Andy is using his own trailer too. The minibus was bought with a grant from the Youth Capital Fund and we used Lottery money to buy stoves and other kit too.

The scouts will be going fishing and using chairs that we scavenged from the Reading Festival. The tarps come with rather rubbish pegs but we have a load of good quality pegs that we picked up at Reading.

Oliver Building Benches

Gas is very expensive and we would need to alot of money to buy enough gas for all the lanterns so we have refurbished our tilleys.  Each of those lamps is worth £120 and runs on the much more economical paraffin.

The ways we save money go on and on; we just took down the cricket net scaffolding at challoner and that will become a handrail at the back of the hut and an oven stand for camp.

One of the areas where save most money is in our volunteers who refurbish the hut. John Potter and his team of ever changing youngsters have done an immense amount of work since he joined in 1969. In recent years they have: reroofed the buildings, put in new windows, built a new floor, built new toilets, rebuilt the stores, painted the buildings, rebuilt the steps outside, laid new paving, shored up the banking around the hut and the list goes on. Since john joined in ’69 he has built the top hut, the stores, landscaped the school’s grounds and turned the hut from one building and 2 rooms to the wonderful home that we have now.

Concrete Laying in 1978