Hey Blog! Last Saturday I went on a walking weekend with Scouts so that’s what I’ll be talking about in today’s post!
In Home Ed on a Camp (September) I wrote about a typical camp – that is, one at the Derbyshire Scout centre Drum Hill, above Little Eaton. Though that particular camp was a full district camp, we did the more usual camp activities – not a two-day walk with a one night stop halfway between the places at start and end! However, in the one last weekend, we did just that; walking from Bakewell to Curbar on Saturday and Curbar to Chatsworth on Sunday.
Preparation was more difficult. I’ve never talked about how I prepare for these events – it’s more boring than the events themselves – but I suppose you’d better know. Scouts sends out a list, we read it, and then everything needed (mostly clothes) gets laid out on the sofa with my rucksack next to it. Then Mum sorts out the things I’m unlikely to need and puts them at the bottom, then possibly need and puts them in next, then things I’m likely to need and puts them in at the top………… You get the idea. In the smaller bag goes little things, like torch, food, drink, compass, and glasses case. Then whatever I’m wearing goes on, I’m dropped off, and my parents vanish back to our hideout to do whatever machinations they are up to (occasionally painting the house – good; buying me presents – even better; or planning how to make me do the jobs – terrible!). This time, after I had been left in care of the Scout leaders at Belper bus station, we all took the bus up to Bakewell, home of the Bakewell Tart.
This famous pudding was created when a chef mixed a pie with the eggy stuff in with the floury stuff at the wrong time, creating one of the most characteristic tarts of all time. Unfortunately, we had to make a move on fast or we could not get to our destination before dark, so we had no time to test how good they are, though we did pass the Bakewell pudding shop on our way to the garderobes toilets. Continuing through Bakewell over the 700-year-old bridge, we turned up a hill and went on our way. At about noon the morning map-readers passed on to the afternoon map-readers, and we had lunch. Then we made our way on past Eyam, the village where its inhabitants isolated themselves to protect others from the plague, or Black Death, in 1666. From Eyam it was almost all downhill (literally, not metaphorically) to our destination of Curbar. It was at this point that two girls from another patrol started doing an improvisation of themselves. To note, the basic unit of Scouts is the troop, which has its own name, like mine – 1st Belper; within the troop are Patrols, usually 3-4, made up of a small number of Scouts which you do most of your activities with – my patrol is Wolves. This improvisation saw them as an old Scottish couple, one with some slightly… odd topics of conversation – all of which got everyone laughing their heads off!
The Curbar Scout hut is one I have been to before, but only in passing when Mum had a Derbyshire Scout Archaeology meeting at the hut. However, this time we stayed in it for quite a long time – long enough to have dinner (Spag Bol) and supper (Cheese & Crackers) and play a mad version of ping-pong. This took up most of the evening, and then we all went to bed. Unusually for a Scout camp, we got to bed in good time – 10 o’clock.
In the morning, we did not stay long at the hut, but set off early. We went up to the Edges, and walked along Baslow Edge, going past the Wellington and Nelson monuments and thence to a Trig Point. Just before this, we swapped maps again, and I took a turn. After carefully navigating around the hills, we came to the back of Chatsworth Park, and through it down to the carpark where our parents were picking us up. Though it might not have been the longest camp I have ever been on, it was the most distance covered in one, and I would like to do the walk again in the future.