May 19th
After the excitement of the Five a side football yesterday, we now had a long, eight kilometres or five miles in old money. Nine and a half Cubs turned up with their families.
Sam and his grandparents, Dan and Ryan (left Beavers but not invested yet) with their parents, Becky and Steph with their parents, Alex and his mum and his friend, Bradley with his brother and parents, Mike and his parents, Tom and his step dad ( I was told off last time for describing Steve as Tom's Dad), Shaun and his almost dad, Akela, daughter and dog, Abi and Hathi.
The day started bright and sunny, a fact that Akela was keen for Hathi to make a record of. As no-one was sure how long it would take to get to the old services at Aust, now a Moto service station every body turned up early. Naturally a game of football was organised, the high point was Steve putting the ball away and as he closed his door Tom opened the passengers side and took the ball out again, Hannah was injured during this game and cut her knee
As we waited there was a lot of activities around us. A car trial, (later found not guilty.) a motorcycle rally and a few people walking. Dead on time we started out, Akela took a list of car registration numbers to the services manager as arranged earlier in the week. The Travel Lodge management let us park our cars for longer than the two hour limit without charge so a big thank you to them.
As we walked to the bridge there was a sponsored walk coming the other way and it got quite busy on the foot-path for a while. There wasn't much to see on the walk apart from some of the Cubs getting too close to the roadway for the Leaders comfort. The Severn was brown and a long way down. Once across the first bridge a lone fisherman was seen and waved at. Through a tunnel under the motorway good for echoes and up onto the Welsh side. Here we took lunch and most welcome it was. The sun was not too bright and the wind was a gentle gale. Highlight of lunch was Abi texting home to find out where her fork and chocolates were. It was Akela's fault as he had picked her up before she was totally ready.
After the usual group photo call we started to walk back and met up with James, his brother and sister and mum. They had run into heavy traffic in Bristol and were late at the start point so they drove over to the Welsh side to meet up with us and do the walk. Such dedication!
The walk back was as exciting as the walk out, two speed boats on the water were the only interesting thing that happened. Strangely it seemed that the distance was shorter in time but longer in distance. We were well spread out by the time we regained the English side. Where Alex gets his energy from is a mystery. There were many weary legs as we staggered back to the cars, naturally a football game was organised and the Cubs were away running around.
Certificates were handed out and people went their own ways home. A few spots of rain as we drove out of the car park showed how finely Akela had judged it.
A big thank you to everybody that turned up, raised lots of money for camp funds. A lovely little walk. Thank goodness we do not have to do it again for two years.