Climbing

During the trip we had 2 or 3 goes at Climbing, it would have been more but seeing as it took the Explorer Scouts in excess of 4 hours to cook and clear up after dinner it was usually dark before they were ready to go !

Canoeing

We had 2 goes at canoeing once in singles and once in doubles and yes that is a church sticking out of the lake

Rafting

The Rafting course was in 2 parts under 16's were allowed to do the 1st 1/2 and the over 16's the second.
The water was very cold, The wet suits worked quite well until you got pushed under water and it poured down your neck

Work at the Camp site

As part of the deal with the camp site you have to work on 'camp site projects' for 4 hours for each week your are there. We spent 2 mornings doing 'manual labour' doing exciting tasks like

• Digging out the rubble from inside the 'pig house' putting it in bags and tipping it away
• Removing the plaster from the walls getting the walls back to bare store
• Cleaning the stonework and sorting stones that can be reused
• Digging Out the Bread oven
• Removing a floor

Caving

We went caving in the National park we started off in a 'walk in cave' which got lower and lower, we walked through waist deep underground streams (quite cold and very muddy) and crawled through very small holes. At the other end of the cave was an icy cold mountain stream and pool which we spent an enjoyable 10 minutes jumping in and out of.

Mud Bath Because the water level in lake was not very high the lake shore was a little bit muddy (OK very Muddy), their is nothing like being up to your Knees in Mud and Explorer Scouts are not at all interested in Mud Fights !

Swimming

With temperatures in the 40's - swimming was a very popular activity, The main problem was finding somewhere to swim (see Mud Bath), these pictures are taken just upstream from where we have to cross the river to get to the camp site

Hill walking

We spent a few days Hill walking, a groups walked up to the Top of the Highest mountain in the Area Bivying half way up and continuing on the following day.

The Explorer Scouts think 2 of the days, were spoilt by the District Explorer Scout Commissioner(DESC) the DESC was giving lessons in Hill walking leadership - which involved pretending to be an inexperienced Scout.

The inexperienced Scout managed to in 1 morning's walk
 Get Blisters as his boots were undone,
 Find poisonous caterpillars,
 Got stung by a wasp and
 Finally as a consequence of not wearing a sun hat, not drink any water and standing in the sun he got heat stroke that caused him to fall over and break his collar bone.
The DESC admits they coped quite well with his nonsense.

Archery

The Archery was different to any archery we have done before
We drove out to a wood - We followed the Instructor into the wood, were we had a practice with the Bows and Arrows
We then did an Archery Trail walking to 10 Targets, all in different Locations and Layouts, Some in hollows in the ground, some at angles and one over a river

Site Seeing