Well it's been a very busy couple of months in the Scout section. In April we had a very successful Easter camp. The feedback from our youth members was very positive even if we did have some terrible weather on Saturday morning/afternoon.
Friday night we pitched camp in the far away Kelly's field. This was followed by the excitment of a night hike and some practise at using "night visition" and night navigation. 11pm saw a welcome return to a mug of hot chocolate before going to bed. That's when the rain and wind came, lashing the camp all night. Saturday was a packed programme, starting with some pioneering activities needed to finish the setup of the camp. Later the scouts were split into a number of groups doing a large pioneering project (building a Monkey bridge), learning fire lighting skills and practising first aid skills. The Monkey bridge was quite an achievement and gave our scouts the chance to apply some more advanced pioneering skills including tensioning with block-and-tackle and picket anchors.
By Saturday night things cleared enough to have a really good camp fire. The Ventures in particular were in fine voice on the camp fire and belted out some fantastic songs with the help of Conor Flanagan on guitar.
On Sunday the sun came out for a fantastic end to our camp. We split into two groups. The majority elected to hike to the Zipit! activity nearby and enjoyed a fantastic day zipping at speed high above the forest floor. Some keen to hone their backwoods skills stayed back for an afternoon of survival skills, backwoods cooking and fire craft with the venture scouts. For the backwoods cooking we had purchased a number of mackeral and sea bass. Sarah and Mary-Liz taught the scouts how to gut, fillet, clean and prepare them for cooking. The fish was cooked three different ways, all on a wood fire: In a biscuit tin with sliced apple, wrapped in foil with herbs and lemon and cooked in the ashes, skewered and cooked/smoked over the fire. All the options were delicious.
With the fish course done Damian showed them how to make a cowboy sandwich - basically a 'lasgne-style' layering of rashers, sliced potato, carrots and meat with onion all wrapped in foil and cooked on the fire. The highlight for most though was a fantastic new invention by the ventures: The chocolate brownie pizza with marshmallows and choc buttons, cooked on the fire. It was sensational! We finished up with some fishing skills and how to make your own survival kit.
As if April wasn't busy enough, in May our scouts entered into the Scout competition as part of Tech Week and won! The prize was a state-of-the-art GPS system for hill walking that will be used by the group in future activities. Friday 23rd of May we held an all-section Fun Day where the scouts got to launch the bottle rockets that they had built the previous Friday! Other activities included - toasting marshmallows, balloon races, tug-o-war, building a chair hoist with block-and-tackle, gutter ball, egg-o-nauts and many other fun activities.
We are very grateful for all the support and enthusiasm we are getting from parents and friends of scouting in Ashbourne. We hope to get started with the building of our Scout Den soon and will be calling on all of you to volunteer to help us, even if only by passing on the message to others who may be in a position to help us with time, money or advice!
Yours in Scouting,
Group Secretary, 6th Meath Ashbourne Scouts