Well, we did it!  Nothing like being ambitious.  Despite our lack of experience in the finer workings of zoom, we decided to offer our sections the opportunity to take part in our virtual family camp.  If things had been normal the cubs and scouts would have been away at Blackwell Court for their annual Camp.

By the time we were due to start  V camp, we went from 6 families, at the beginning of the week to 16  families signed up by Friday afternoon.  This covered all sections from Beavers to scouts.

After a mad rush around re-organising the resources, which parents collected from the scout hall, we were ready to go on Saturday morning!

Lots of different activities for everyone to try; we did a quick TikTok style warm up each morning, we had a virtual sailing regatta, which was supposed to be aimed at scouts, but quite a few of the cubs wanted to join in too.  We made juggling balls and discovered one of our parents was a bit of an expert, who volunteered to come and teach juggling skills to all sections once we are back in the scout hall. We gave them some leaf identification bags to collect the  leaves on their daily walk, the scouts did some of their meterology badge, Beavers and cubs learned more about the weather and wind, making windmills and anemometers. It was a very busy day on Saturday.  We ended the day with a campfire, with marsmallows and smores.

After a week of mainly dry and sunny weather, we had very blustery winds on Saturday.  Still it did not deter most of our families from braving

 the conditions and sleeping in their tents in the garden.  Very well done to them all.

Sunday had more of a chilled start and we had a second run of the sailing regatta with a few new entants from the cub section.  It proved to be very popular.  Beavers and cubs had lots  more fishy crafts activities to try.

  This is one of those occasions when our parental support is vital to the running and success of virual activities. We really appreciate all that parents do to help their children continue with their scouting activities.  

Most families then lit their campfires again and made their own pizzas for lunch and many tried ‘chocolate bananas’ for the first time.  Well done everyone. 

At the end of our camp we asked everyone to reflect on their weekend and come up with one word to describe their best bit.  One of our scouts put together a word ‘cloud’ with everyones comments.  

Thank you to everyone who took part and all the leaders who also gave up their time to make sure this happened.

Lets hope it is not too long until we can all get together again.