This was early this year so the Cubs would be outside freezing there Cobs off while the Leaders slept inside, in the warm curled up next to the radiators. This may not seem fair and on reflexion it's not. Tough!
Good Friday was an almost normal Pack Night, with the one exception - we were going to get the Cubs tired and then put them into tents to shiver through the night. The tiring bit was going to be the walk back from the top of Pensford hill.
A large number of Cubs braved the elements, were dead keen, didn't realise what they were letting themselves into (delete as applicable) Among them were:-Matthew, Oliver, Sam, Holly, Millie, Sophie, Charlie, both James's, Bradley, Euan, Tom, Jamie, Callum, Luke, Sebastian and Josh. The Leaders Team was brightened up by Laura from Tuesday cubs coming along and helping the Friday Leaders, a rose between to old snorers. She actually slept as far away as possible from the horrible noises coming from the Male Leaders.
Friday dawned sunny but windy, despite the dire forecasts from the weather people. It couldn't possibly last into the late afternoon and early evening and sure enough it didn't. Akela and Hathi arrived early on Friday afternoon to partially put the tents up, just the main guys to stop the tents falling over until the Cubs put the rest of the tent up. This plan worked perfectly until we had the tents up and billowing like a spinnaker on a racing yacht. The tents were then put up enough to stop them being blown away. Hathi provided his small dome tent as we only had three girls on the camp. All the planning was about to come to fruition.
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The Cubs arrived and put their stuff neatly on to chairs. They were then sent out with Hathi to finish putting the tents up. The Cubs were sat in a line and the boys formed into two groups odds and evens, the evens were allocated to the tent on the left and the evens to the tent on the right. Well eight ended up in one and six in the other! Why do we bother? This was as expected a chance for the older Cubs to swagger about holding mallets until requested to actually use them. We had some first time campers on this camp and they were encouraged to help, getting their position correct to put the pegs into the ground at the correct angle all things that the older Cubs should know but sadly appears to have evaporated from their memories.
With the tents up and groundsheets installed the Cubs put their sleeping bags into the tents. After this it was tea time Akela cooked up some Cub type food, burgers, sausages and fish fingers, while Laura went off to the local chippy to get twenty chip helpings. The Cubs were kept amused by doing word searches and mazes with a seasonal flavour. Tea was lovely the portions were huge and there were a lot of filled up Cubs.
At about 18:00 a group of parents arrived with their cars ready to transport us out to our start point at the bottom of Settle Hill. We were joined on the hike by Alison, mum to one of the Cubs. It was just getting dark and the Cubs were desperate to use their torches, the Leaders were keen to show that as it was a full moon that there was no need for a torch. Yes the sky was clear and we were sheltered by the hill we were about to climb. Pausing only twice to admire the view over Pensford and the surrounding landscape and to let the male Leaders a chance to catch their breath, we made it to the top. The farm that used to employ a flock of geese ( the group name of geese should be a threaten of. . .) must have found some other way of protecting their land as they were missing.
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Once the top of the hill was reached we felt the full force of the arctic wind, a couple of Cubs started to complain that they were cold and had to be told to put their coats on. The grass airfield was the next obstacle and waiting briefly to check left and right for traffic we crossed it. Alison worked out what we had meant when we said that it wasn't very long but was really, really wide. We had our first OOB experience at this point and this was on grass!! We reached Norton Malreward's churchyard and the old jokes started, "dead centre" of Norton Malreward, People are dying to get into the churchyard. These were treated with the distain that they deserved. At this point Akela let us down as while he popped up the lane to 'water the horses' we were hit with a hail-stone shower, we were protected by some overhanging trees so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Akela claimed that his position of sungod wasn't in question as he hadn't been in the hail stones and we must have imagined it.
From Norton Malreward we cut off cross country again, the recent dryish weather meant that the fields were not too wet but the mud was sticky and made the walkers taller with every step. The sky had cleared again and with the moon shining down on us we crossed the fields to a small country lane that was crossed without incident. At this point the Cubs were informed that the sixes were to be changed around as we now had enough Cubs for four sixes and that we were restarting Red Six. This meant that we would have to promote a Sixer and Seconder and as one of the promoted Cubs was a Seconder we need to replace her.
At this point the Cubs were reminded of the farm we had to by-pass next and that the farmer was not happy with people walking across his land. He was reported to have two vicious dogs and a shotgun and wasn't afraid to use them so we would have to be very quiet while we walked past his house. Our Cubs can't be quiet to save their lives and so they were all eaten by the dogs or blown to pieces by the farmers gun, or was that just a dream? The going underfoot became much much softer and suspicious pools of very dark liquid appeared in the deep ruts. These were to be avoided at all costs as the fluid was the result of cows drinking and not just water.
We started to descend towards Whitchurch and Akela was glad that he had walked this part of the path during the previous week. The water levels had dropped by about a foot and the stream was not now the ragging torrent that it had been. The next obstacle was the A38 main road through Whitchurch but it was now quite late and the low number of cars passing made it simple. At this point some of the younger Cubs rather stopped enjoying the experience, they were up late and had been walking for hours and their little legs were starting to get tired. There is little worse than having to trudge on metre after metre not knowing how much more of the torture was to come, when the Cubs realised that we were only a few hundred metres from the Scutt they brightened up a lot. Being allowed to use their torches was an extra bonus for them.
A couple of the Cubs fathers had been busy while we were out walking and Burgers and Hot-Dogs were available along with a hot drink for those that wanted them. Akela set up the projector and the Cubs were shown a DVD that lasted rather longer than the Leaders planned and at the end of the film it was midnight! One Cub had fallen deeply asleep on his chair while the film was being shown and had to be woken up so that he could go to bed.
The Cubs were put into their tents and the doors 'sewn up' to stop the cold wind from using the tents as wind tunnels. They were encouraged to get to sleep as soon as possible as then they would not feel the cold. So they all went to sleep like the wonderful kids that they are, eventually. at 02:30 it finally went quiet. The Leaders sat up for a while watching Tom and Jerry cartoons and eating the replacement cheese, the original cheese had been taken by the Scouts to their camp at Glenny Woods. As a weather god our Akela had the last laugh as it was cold, wet and very windy for the poor Scouts, shame! The Leaders went to their beds knowing that they did not have long before the Cubs were up ready for the new day.
Sure enough Akela was up at three as Cubs trailed through going to the toilet, each time he had to get up and make sure that the tents were sewn up properly. At 06:30 The Cubs had the riot act read to them, and at about 07:00 the other Leaders were up and about thanks to the cups of tea supplied by Akela, what a wonderful human being he is. While Akela hid in the kitchen preparing breakfast for 20, Laura and Hathi got the Cubs up, dressed and their kit nice and tidy.
For a change we had Choc-o-crispies or something similar as a starter which was nice. Then the Cubs were formed into a neat line and had their breakfast slopped onto a plate. Eggy bread, enjoyed by some tried for the first time by others, sausages and beans, girt lush. The amount of waste was remarkably little so it must have been good. The mornings activities included some of the Cubs mums coming in and doing some Easter 'crafty' things. Small Easter eggs in chocolate shreddie nests, Easter biscuits with extra decoration.
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Laura as the 'White Goods' expert did the washing up, Akela and Hathi being proper 'blokes' were unable to work out how to use the dishwasher. The tents were dry and so Akela and Hathi took a couple of minutes to take them down and drag them into the hall. Hathi's small three person tent nearly got away as it took up being a kite for a desperate moment until wrestled to the floor. While the Cubs were putting the tents away. Hathi and Akela wandered around the compound hiding eggs for the Cubs to search for in a later activity. Once the tents were put away Akela got all the Cubs to sit down quietly and did his version of the Easter story. This was not a quick story and the Cubs stayed riveted to his voice and the story. He finished off by reading some verses from an old Bible to the Cubs bewilderment. The language was old fashioned and the Cubs were impressed with it even though they could understand little of it.
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The egg hunt was next, a lot of plastic eggs had been secreted around the Scutt, each one had a note inside saying if the lucky finder had won an Easter egg. The Cubs rushed off and returned to Akela with the eggs ready to be opened. Soon there was only a few eggs that had not been found, Akela said that there were three eggs still out to be found and that one of them was a very important egg or rather it had a special important message in it. All the Cubs rushed around and when they were out of sight he hid the special egg that he had 'forgotten' to hide previously. Two eggs were found and only the special egg was left and it was Oliver that spotted it hiding in the trophy cabinet, but only after several broad hints from Akela.
As we had a few real eggs left over from breakfast and we didn't want them to go off we had a demonstration of how strong an egg is when crushed in a hand this was done by Matthew above his head, amazingly when it did break, aided by Akela it splashed over two other Cubs and missed Matt almost entirely. The rest of the Cubs were then told to stand on the car park and catch the eggs, some went very high and made a lovely mess when they landed, Hathi's special egg caused a few open mouths when it bounced wildly around.
By now it was nearly time to finish and apart from a few minutes cleaning up it was all over, parents arrived and the Cubs were formed up in their Sixes and Akela brought the 'real' Easter eggs in and gave them out to the Cubs.
The Leaders went next door to the Harvester for a debrief and then onward to home for a sleepy afternoon.
Thanks are due to the wonderful Parents that drove us out to the starting place, for cooking the supper, for doing the craftwork in the morning. Special thanks to Alison for coming on the walk with us, extra special thanks to Laura for helping through out the weekend and putting up with the two more 'mature' Leaders. Akela was allowed to keep his title of sungod as it was sunny somewhere, Not in Stockwood as it was a "night" hike.