End of summer activities

Autumn is now officially with us and the dark nights will soon be starting earlier!  The Scout Group therefore made an effort to get a couple more camps under its belt during the tail end of summer.

First of all was a camp, held locally at 'Scoutswood' purely for Scout,s as they had missed out on the trip to Sweden, and which concentrated on achieving the backwoods badge.  This involved shelter building, rabbit skinning, gutting and cooking, lashing a platform to a tree, direction finding using the sun etc.

 Soon afterwards the whole group took part in the Area event of the Elders Shield and Challenge Hike. We fielded the largest numbers of any groups from within the Northumbria area!  One of our Scout teams won the award for effort and one of our Seniors was part of the winning Senior team.  Not bad for our first Area event!

Discovery Award: Sweden 2011

Senior Scouts from 1^st Flodden B-P Scout Group have recently returned from a very successful, yet challenging, expedition to Sweden.

Beginning of the expedition

Route planning

Drawing water

The Flodden contingent met up with Senior Scouts and Rover Scouts from other Baden-Powell Scout Association groups as well as Girl Guides to take part in the Discovery Award, which can also be used as the expedition part of the Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. This involved covering a minimum of 50 miles over four days and nights by hiking, navigating and camping in the lake and forest landscape of Smaland in southern Sweden. Since scouts had to carry essential equipment with them including tents, cooking equipment, spare clothing, rations etc it was a serious challenge. Many had to contend with blisters and skinned feet on the way but soldiered on to complete the expedition. On top of this, they had to contend with the diverse weather conditions which ranged from very hot sunshine to torrential thunder and lightning storms.

After the expedition, the group journeyed to Denmark where they were met by a Danish Scout Group who laid on a very welcome meal for the weary travellers. In the evening, scouts relaxed around a campfire making pancakes before singing songs, telling jokes and swapping contact details with new friends.

The next few days were spent in Denmark and included sightseeing in Copenhagen, including the National Museum, the very interesting Christiania and The Little Mermaid as well as the rural, yet grand, town of Soro before returning to the UK.