Final Scout Meeting of the Year

It was our final meeting before our first ever Summer Camp in Lough Keel, which we are all really looking forward to. There has been a lot of preparation and anticipation from both the scouts and from the leaders. However, more of that in the next few posts which will come from the camp.

It was a fairly chilled out meeting tonight as we just wanted to relax and have some fun. We started the meeting by reciting our Section Charter COURAGE, HONESTY, ADVENTURE, RESPECT, TEAMWORK, ENVIRONMENT, LAUGHTER. We have come a long way since we first recited this charter and it was great to hear it still resounding around the meeting room.

Our first game tonight was snatch the bacon. We put a bit of a twist on this though as the participants had to race up and down the room before they could “Snatch the Bacon”. Abbey was with us again from Cubs as part of her link badge. She won both rounds against one of our older scouts. She’ll fit right in. During the game, we had a visit from Mark Hardiman. Mark is the Group Leader in 73rd Raheny Scouts and also on the Communications team in Scouting Ireland. He had offered to loan us some gear for camp – namely Hammocks. We planned to do a couple of nights in the woods if we could with them. Mark was full of praise for what we were doing and he gave us plenty of ideas from his years of experience.

Ciaran then went through how to pack a bag for camp again, this time including gear for an extended camp and not just a weekend. He showed the scouts a few tricks for getting their clothes packed neatly and well into their rucksacks. As usual, there were plenty of questions and banter, but it was time well spent as packing for a 7 day camp can be tricky.

We made sure that everyone had the final logistical information – the where and when to be there and what they needed to bring and then we closed our final meeting of our first year. From September to now, we have learned so much. It’s hard to believe that we were all strangers then and now we were heading off for a week long camp as firm friends. Here come the Good times.