Woggleknot.com – An Explorer Scout's Blog

I’ve had very little time for this blog as of late because exams and coursework deadlines have been approaching and I’ve been spending a lot of time working and revising. I’ve spent hours over the last week doing music coursework and practicing for performance exams and I hadn’t really left much time for anything else. Fortunately, all the music work is behind me now because today I got everything recorded and sent off. Just in time too – today was the deadline! Now I just need to get through the next two months of exams then I can finally leave school – I can’t wait.

Anyway, I recieved some very good news last week – I’ve been selected for Jamboree! I’ll be joining about 40,000 other scouts in Sweden next year, and I’m really looking forward to it. However, it now means that everybody in our district who got selected needs to work really hard to raise £20,110 so we can go. We’ve had a few fundraising ideas so we’ll definately be able to achieve this.

I said there was going to be 12 places and over one hundred people, but that was wrong. There’s 15 places and 60 people took part – so I have a better chance of getting a place. It was a really good day – the first half of the day my group were doing survival activities. We learnt about the best way to light fires and the best kindling to use. I missed most of this one because I had to go to my interview (which I think went okay). After that, we learnt how to make food to take with you on the go. We mixed flour, wheat grains and fruit together to make a dough then flattened it and put it on tin lids and left it on the fire for a few minutes – we now had biscuits! But mine was rock solid and I couldn’t even get it off the tin lid – I had to scrub it off ): . We then went to the next activity and we made a shelter out of a big plastic sheet and rope. These activities were really fun, so I’ll have to make sure I go to the survival camp at Blackhills in july!

After lunch, we played a few team games. These were tricky and required quite a bit of thought and planning. My favourite game was one where you had to fill a pipe with water so the toy ducks at the bottom would float up and come out. However, the pipe had lots of holes in that we had to cover up or else the water would leak out. We all ended up getting soaked!

I’m not sure really sure If I’ll get a place on Jamboree – I really hope I do. But if I don’t, at least I had a lot of fun on both selection weekends!

This saturday coming up I’ll be taking part in county jamboree selection. In February I went on a selection weekend for my district but I didn’t get a place. Then, there was 3 places for 12 people. This time, there’s 12 places for over one hundred people – so the chance of getting a place is even lower. I really hope I succeed this time!

The event is going to be held at Blackhills Campsite. There’s going to be outdoor, team building activities but I don’t know what we’ll be doing. They’ll want to see how we work as a team and watch how we interact with other people. If building a fire is one of the activities I just hope that It doesn’t rain! It’s hard to get a good fire going with wet wood and it usually creates a lot of smoke – this means we’ll stink for the rest of the day.

Everybody has to give a 3 minute presentation about “The World Jamboree in Sweden 2011″. I’m planning on including a few interesting facts about Jamborees and scouting in Sweden. Does anybody know any? Please comment!

This post is quite late because I haven’t really had much time this week. I’ve got loads of coursework that needed to get done and I’ve been revising for a maths exam I have next week. Also, I AM NOW SIXTEEN! It was my birthday on Wednesday  so I didn’t bother blogging then either!

Anyway, last weekend I was at Bradley Wood as a young leader to help out at this years winter camp. These camps are very fun and I enjoyed the last one in 2008 back when I was in scouts. The camp was a bit pricey at £30 for scouts (I only had to pay £5! Leader’s price ) but it was easy to see why – so many things were going on, and some things needed to be hired – such as outdoor laser tag and arcade game machines.

When I got there all the scouts were scattered about the site doing activities so there wasn’t really much to do. So I just wandered around and did a few activities for a bit too! I stayed at the shooting range for quite a while (I’m not very good, but I really like shooting) and I watched a few groups of people play laser tag outside on the field.

However, on the second day the camp had to be cancelled because of the snow – people were having difficulties getting vehicles and equipment off the site so we had to abandon our tents, put on our rucksacks and walk to a nearby road. It’s kind of funny when you think about it – the winter camp was cancelled because of winter weather!