Woggleknot.com – An Explorer Scout's Blog

The Field Gun competition was tonight. The “Field Gun” was a bit better than the one we used at Bradley, and it could stay in one piece without anybody having to hold onto it.

I was supposed to be helping the leaders, but one scout troop didn’t have enough people in the team so I ended up actually taking part in the competition.

The obstacles were really good, and it was a bit similar to the stuff you could see in the video I posted last week. The scouts began by dismantling the field gun. There were three obstacles on the course. The first was a small wall with a hole in – equipment was passed through the hole and the scouts had to climb over. The second obstacle was barrels stacked up in a pyramid shape – the scouts had to climb over and pass the parts of the field gun over. The third obstacle was a rope and pulley which the scouts used to pull themselves and the field gun parts across from one side to the other. Once all the parts and people were across, the field gun was rebuilt and the scouts had to run back to the beginning of the course.

It was slightly embarrassing being quite a bigger than all the other scouts taking part, but it was still fun.

Next Friday there is a competition called the nighthawk challenge, which Bradley Scouts are entering.

In the competition, the scouts have to hike from checkpoint to checkpoint through the night (and into the morning). The checkpoints are only open at certain times, so Scouts must arrive within a certain time window, or they are disqualified. The walk is usually around 12 miles long. However, the walk isn’t the hard part.

There is also team of Adult volunteers called “Hunters” who split up and search all the areas where scouts could be walking, and any scout troops that get found loses a point. The scout team that reaches the finish point ,and has lost the least amount of points, wins.

Scouts must decide on which routes they should take to each checkpoint, and they should choose routes that hunters are least likely to find them on. In order to win the competition, a lot of decision making and good tactics is necessary.

I managed to win the competition last year with my team, and hopefully the team from Bradley Scouts this year will do well too!

Tonight the scouts were practising for a field gun competition next week on Friday. We built our very own field gun and made some obstacles to practise with. There were horizontal poles to crawl under, tables to crawl over, chairs to run across , and chairs to weave in and out of. The scouts started off with very slow times, but after many practises on the course and discussion of tactics, they managed to improve their times by working as a team. One of the teams managed to get a time that was under half of the original time.

However, although I call it a “Field Gun”, it was actually a milk crate tied to a wooden pole and two old tyres were held to the side of it. It sounds funny, but does it really matter if the scouts still had lots of fun?

In case you have no idea what a Field Gun Competition is, watch this:

I’m thinking of doing skateboarding instead of hiking for my Duke of Edinburgh award. My friend Lucas said I should skate with him. I’m still going to do hiking once a week and stuff, but here’s some reasons I think skateboarding would be a better choice for D of E:

• Easier to see the improvement
• I’ll be doing it with other people which means I’ll be able to learn more and I won’t lose motivation as easily
• Skateboarding’s a pretty awesome sport

I used to skate, but I was never any good. I was always an unmotivated wimp. Maybe this could be a second, better attempt?

Tonight at explorers we had a “traditional scouting night”.

First, we were split into two teams. One team went to fetch firewood, and one team (the one I was in) went to get a bag of ropes. There were two challenges. For one challenge, each member of the team had to learn a knot each and show it to the leaders. For the other challenge, the team had to make a fire.

My team didn’t do so well on the knots but the other team did. However, their fire wasn’t very good and ours was, so we ended up winning overall.

I’ve been thinking about some activities I’d like to do which will help me get achievements in scouts.

For my physical recreation section of my Duke of Edingurgh’s award I’m thinking about doing hiking. I could buy an OS map of the area and think of some routes to do, gradually building them up to be harder and harder. I could also go somewhere a bit further away to hike and camp at least once a month.

For my skill section of D of E, I’ve decided I want to do drawing. I’m not very good but I enjoy it and it’s something I would like to get good at.

If I do drawing for three months, hiking for six months and continue with being a young leader for a year, I’ll get my Duke of Edinburgh Silver award.

I’m doing my grade 4 rockschool electric guitar exam soon and I’m thinking of combining this with the Musician Stage 4 badge. Part of earning the badge is performing publicly so I should benefit from the experience.

Also, I’ve decided I’m going to learn lots of “scouty stuff” like knots and making fire and stuff, just because I’d like to learn how to do it.

Tonight we built some rafts to use in the little reservoir. I learnt a new knot called a “Japanese Square Lashing” which we used to tie barrels and wooden poles together. I wish I knew the knot when I did other pioneering projects with scouts because it’s a lot quicker than using a square lashing, which is the lashing knot I used to use for things like this.

Unfortunately, by the time the raft was finished it became too dark to go in the water for long, so the scouts only got to test the rafts out for a few minutes in the canal – from one bank to the other, and back. However, it was still fun making the rafts (at least for me)

It was also “bring a buddy” night, so we had a few extra people, which is good. After we dismantled the raft two scouts got invested, so it was a nice finish to the evening.

It turns out there isn’t a huge ban on knives in scouting, the newspapers are just being stupid.

The uk chief comissioner, Wayne Bulpitt, has blogged and the UK scouts website has published a story about the “incorrect” articles. Which states: “In fact, Scouting’s rules on the subject have not significantly changed since the late 1960s.”

Looks like scouts can still enjoy their whittling

I’ve heard something about scouts no longer being able to carry knives on camps. And I couldn’t help blogging about how stupid the whole situation is.

When I was in scouts, we used to sit together in little groups and whittle sticks with our penknives. It was part of the camping experience. But the people in charged of health and safety have decided that scouts should no longer have that experience. They seem to think that it is not a good idea for young people to be able to learn how to use dangerous tools safely and responsibly – isn’t this an important lesson that scouting has traditionally taught?

I see no problem with scouts carrying knives on camps. As long as the leaders show the scouts how to use them properly and make sure they can, then it’s safe. You might get a few cut fingers, but nothing serious. Besides, it’s all part of learning what happens when your not careful.

I think people should concentrate more on the people using the knives for crime, instead of the knives themselves. Stopping scouts from using knives on camps isn’t going to help the knife-crime situation. It will, however, put a stop to an old scouting tradition.

Tonight was my first night as a young leader at Bradley Scouts, in Huddersfield. I’ve decided that I’m going to blog after every meeting so I can keep a record of what I’ve done. The blog’s called “woggleknot” because I wanted a weird name that’s also scout related.

Tonight was the first night of the term and the scouts needed to be sorted into two patrols. The leaders thought it would be a good idea to hold a kind of “scouts olympics” for the two new patrols to compete against each other.

The games included Javelin Throwing (Made by rolling up newspapers tightly), Equestrian (Piggyback races), Velodrome (racing around the hall on mini scooters) and a few others. My favourite was boat racing. The scouts had to sit in a line on the floor as if they were ina a boat, grab the legs of the person behind them, and shuffle to the end of the hall – it was quite funny to watch!

It was a great first night full of fun and the scouts seemed to really enjoy it.