Survival Camp July 2011

Survival Camp July 2011

Hi All,

During the weekend of 9/10th July, several of our Scouts spent a weekend away with the 5th Sutton Coldfield East Scout Group on their survival camp.

The Scouts arrived at Beaudesert between 1.30 & 2.30pm, some hot-foot from the raft race, and after a short safety talk they were set the task of building their shelters. The Scouts constructed a variety of bivouacs, either making use of the natural shelter around them or starting from scratch with a basic wooden frame. For the more advanced designs I showed the Scouts how to do basic lashings.

Soft ferns were used for roof & floor coverings.

Once the bivouacs were well on the way to completion, the group was given another important task with respect to survival, making a fire. The Scouts were asked to collect kindling and fuel for the fire and a chopping square was set-up to cut the larger pieces into more manageable sections.

Once an ample supply of kindling & fuel had been collected, I showed the Scouts 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.

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. They also baked stuffed apples and bananas with chocolate rammed in!

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 a traditional basha, using various lengths of wood for the supports and ferns on the floor. This was my bed for the night!

The weather was very mild and I am happy to say that everyone got a good nights sleep.

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 us along and making us feel most welcome.

I hope to run a survival camp for our own Troop in the near future.

Yours in Scouting,

Adam