Survival Camp July 2010

Survival Camp

Hi All,

During the weekend of 10/11th July I spent a weekend away with the 5th Sutton Coldfield East Scout Group on their survival camp.

The Scouts arrived at Beaudesert at approx 1.30pm and the group were split into two. The 1st group collected kindling & fuel for their fires and the second group started work on their bivouacs, collecting wood for the frame and ferns/bracken to cover it with.

Once an ample supply of kindling & fuel had been collected, I showed the first group how to lay a fire. We used cotton wool as tinder. Once the fires were lit, they were built up and then allowed to burn down to hot embers so that they could try a bit of backwoods cooking.

The second group constructed a variety of bivouacs, either making use of the natural shelter around them or starting from scratch with a basic wooden frame.

At an appropriate time in the afternoon the groups swapped over and repeated the tasks.

When the fires had burned down to embers the group tried some backwoods cooking. They wrapped potatoes in tin foil and wrapped fresh fish in wet newspaper and placed them all in the hot ash until properly cooked.

At the end of the evening the Scouts got into their survival bags and then crawled inside their bivouacs for the night.

I put up my mozzi-net bed and strung a basha between some trees. This was my bed for the night!

The weather was very mild and some of the Scouts eventually preferred to sleep outside of their bivouacs under the night sky.

In the morning after bacon & egg rolls, the Scouts dismantled their bivouacs, cleared up the fires and left the camp exactly how they had found it.

They were collected by their parents at approx 9.30am.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jo Garvey and her team of Leaders at the 5th Sutton Coldfield East Scout Group for inviting me along and making me feel most welcome.

I hope to run a survival camp for our own Troop sometime this year.

Yours in Scouting,

Adam