Summer Camp Reports

Macaroni Downs Farm, Burford

Camp overview

At 11.15am on Sunday July 25th we said goodbye to our usual lives, waved goodbye to our families and drove to Summer Camp. When we arrived we sat down and ate our lunch, I was happy to find a Mars bar in my lunch box! Anyway, after this we had to put the Icelandic tents up - these were to be our home for the next 6 days. There were lots of tent pegs to knock in and I did so many that I actually had blisters on my hands for the next two days.

On Monday we made breakfast, I was head chef for our patrol with Alex as my sous chef; we had bacon, beans, and toast, this all went down very well with the leaders (who we cooked for).

The activities we did at camp included a talent show where each patrol had to perform for ten minutes; we did our own take on Snow White, finishing with Snow White and the narrator singing Snowpatrol’s Chasing Cars! We played lots of sports including cricket - where I reversed swept the ball down the hill for 21 runs – and football, and we also got to make giant catapults.

Everyone had a great time, the weather was sunny and mostly dry, I would like to say thank you to the leaders Olly, Tom, Josh, & Amy and the young leaders (Joe & Jack) for organising the camp and all the activities.

Dan

Patrol Leader

Lynx Patrol

The Night Hike

This summer’s scout camp at Macaroni Downs Farm was amazing. My favourite activity was the night hike. For this we were dropped by car at a trig point, Knoll Barn S6243, which was roughly 4½ miles away from camp, we then had to plan our route back. When we set off walking home it was 10pm, and there was a big a red moon in the sky, all was fine and dandy for an hour or so of walking until we reached Dean Farm; this is when what sounded like a huge Rottweiler barked at us. We froze to the spot for what felt like much longer but was probably only a minute (if that). A farmer came out from the farmhouse and called his dog in. We thought we were in trouble but we explained we were scouts on a night hike and our route “happened to pass his lovely farm”, he wished us good luck and we carried on after turning round to illuminate ‘the Rottweiler-like dog’ – to our horror we saw an adorable black Labrador!

Stuart

Patrol Leader

Scorpions Patrol