Sunday 29th

The Cubs were not up and ready to face the day until quiet a civilised time 07:00 so while Akela busied himself in the kitchen sorting out breakfast Baggy and Hathi sorted the Cubs out with getting dressed putting sleeping things away neatly, getting washed - (allegedly) Setting the table out and sitting quietly.

After a very nice cooked breakfast we had our first activity. Two hours on the Zip wire, fantastic! Luckily the Leaders were not expected to participate but were given very good instructions in what to do how to do it and where to go if it all went horribly wrong. Safety was our first priority, obviously, and the first victim was selected, placed in the harness. The escape procedure was explained to them. The Zip wire did not run from a tree to the ground as the aerial runway did, this was felt to be too dangerous, but ran from a high platform across a deep valley to high up in a tree on the other side. When the Cub/victim had stopped zipping on the wire they were stuck 30 feet in the air! Oh Dear! they then had to remember to un-attach the safety line and abseil down the rescue line. Easy peasey, not. There was Akela throwing them off the top, well more accurately walking them to the edge and watching in mild surprise as they zipped off.

Baggy amusing the queue of excited and anxious Cubs and Hathi talking the Cub down, great fun. Hathi found that pulling the rescue line really tight the abseiling release lever used by the Cubs did not work and on one memorable occasion watched as he released the line and the Cub dropped a couple of feet before locking the release lever. Due to the threat of imminent physical damage by this Cub Hathi started to behave himself immediately. Sadly only one Cub was unable to take part as our time ran out just before Akela could talk her into zipping. Still the wire will still be there next year, we just hope that Megan will still be with us.

Lunch was more sandwiches and fruit and a soft drink taken outside as it was so nice.

Right then! Archery was next. Everybody had to have a go. We made some new friends with a GSL and SL from if memory serves me right the 56th Bristol Group. There was a short, graphic safety talk, showing how far an arrow would protrude from the front of one of our smaller Cubs should she be hit by a careless arrow from behind. Suitably awed the first four archers took up there weapons. The targets were very close and even the Leaders could hit them! Several Cubs needed some help as they were doing it for the first time but everybody ended up worrying the gold. Our two hours passed really quickly but as the second group did not turn up we kept on shooting. This meant that tea was delayed and our planned water athletics would be put on hold.

Tea was delayed as well by the cooker taking ages to heat some water for the veggies, but the roast dinner was most welcome.

As a thank you to the archers we had invited their group to join in with our water slide, and they did their Leaders taking the distances slid very seriously with the plastic membranes not being long enough they continued onto the grass. Our Cubs got cold in no time and it was left to the braver and possibly sillier hard cases to continue until the bottles of lubrication ran out.

To warm up and finish the day we had a Bar B Q. Apart from the usual burgers and hot dogs the Cubs tried baked banana with melted chocolate or with brown sugar. Oranges with chocolate in or Hathi's favourite an egg baked inside an empty orange, yummy. Making stew was popular as well with mince meat, veggies a little stock wrapped up in a foil pouch, cooked in the embers and then eaten.

By now it had got late and some of the Cubs were a bit worn out so being a kind Leaders team we made sure that they got a nice nights sleep.

Leaders to their beds before midnight which was nice.