Hey Blog! This one’s a bit late, as my grandparents were here last week, so I left the blog to this week. However, for the third time on Home Ed in a Shed, we’ve got a camp to write about!
Every year, my Scout troop does a camp in January, known as the “Chilly Challenge”. This is meant to be deliberately cruel very cold and challenge yourself to spending a night out in a chilly environment. I have taken part in it once or twice before, but this was at a new campsite I’ve never been to, north of us on the roads towards Chesterfield. We found it in the dark, but weren’t sure anyone was there as we couldn’t see anyone’s lights. However, at last we explored up the slope and found the rest of the Scouts setting up tents.
If you go camping, with Scouts or otherwise, I recommend SETTING UP YOUR TENT IN DAYLIGHT. It is a pig of a job to do when you can’t see properly, and if you don’t know your tent is even worse. I also recommend bringing one bag of everything, which I usually do anyway. Including a thick warm blanket to keep warm and block the sun out when you’ve only had three hours sleep (and if necessary to block out your tentmate’s snores!). Either way, we managed to put the tent up, and then all went to collect firewood. This was really the only chance to see the site, as we were not there in daylight for long enough to fully observe it. We did not go everywhere, but managed to pick up enough for a decent fire, and then sat round it on camping chairs and some of us told silly stories.
All of us had had dinner before we arrived so supper was hot chocolate with a single slice of unbuttered cheap white bread. There are also cupasoups at Scouts but these are a good few years out of date so they taste a bit old and none of the Scouts want them. We must have stayed up till 10 or 11 at night, more likely the latter, and then went to the tents just as an owl began hooting. You could tell this was a Tawny male, as it goes Hooo, Hooo. The female tawny owl goes Kee-wick, which, if put before the male’s call, goes, as even Shakespeare put it – “the Tawny Owl goes to-wit, to-woo” or something like that! Most women say you can tell which is the male and the female by what they say to each other – the lady says “twit!” and the other says “to you!”.
In the morning, we all got up – some at different times. I am generally one of the first up on a camp, at which point I pack up my sleeping bag, roll mat, and everything else, and then go out and wait for my Scout leader to tell the others to get up you lazybones (he doesn’t say that!) and for breakfast. This time, it was bacon cobs (also known as baps, burgers, or oven-bottom-muffins) and then shortly afterwards it was time for striking (packing up) tents. However, we didn’t go home until one of the people who manage the district Scout organisation came round and handed out the exclusive Chilly Challenge badges. Mine is already on my uniform!
As to whether I would do it again YES, I would. Definitely. And I will, next year!