Cambridgeskip

So.... my band of merry men and women were on camp at Gilwell Park over the weekend. Saturday morning some of them were on air rifle shooting and were instructed by a chap from California. Among his various eccentric ways he had names for all the rifles. All were female because, in his words, they are both beautiful and dangerous! Just curious, is this a truly American thing? We've done shooting before and never encountered named rifles.... The rifles were call Elizabeth, Mary, Georgina and Juliette.

I have some experience of this. I was an assistant cub scout leader aged 19, cub scout leader aged 24 and scout leader aged 31 and handed the cubs onto a 19 year old at that point, I'm 38 now. I've personally never had any of the comments about what is a young man doing hanging around kids. If anything here things are turned on their heads. It's older men who tend to get the comments like that made about them. For younger adult leaders, if you get any comments, it's about being young, not a parent, inexperienced, how do you know how to deal with kids?etc. Late 30s is probably the easiest t

Interesting to hear how it's gone elsewhere! We have a twin group in Canada (who we're off to see for summer camp, exciting times!), they don't have enough girls to have single sex patrols (I think currently two girls in a total of about 25) but speaking to their leaders they say the same as you, which is girls come from girl guides but don't go back the other way, which is exactly what we see in the UK. One thing we have deliberately tried to avoid though is the single sex patrol. This is from the observation of one of the major differences in the sexes at scout age (10-14 for us), girls

Like most groups this side of the pond we have our stock of tents. We have two sets of tents. Light weights, most a mix of Vango Omega and Eos 350, that we would use for weekend camps. Our oldest ones are about 5 years old. We've sent a couple away for zip repairs and replaced a couple of poles but over all they seem pretty durable. This is what they look like up And heavy weight canvas patrol tents. In theory they are 6 man tents. In practice that means 6 cubs or 5 scouts, 4 if you want some wriggle room. We typically use them for longer summer camps although they are also nice and airy s

I've been following this thread with interest. Thought it was time for a couple more observations.... Re the toilet and showers facility issue. If anyone is looking over at the UK and thinking "well the coped with it" don't forget that over here the Girl Guides have very few campsites compared to the scout association. This means from the earliest days scout campsites have been geared up for having girl guides camp there as well. So there was no "big bang" of having to cope with the change. Lets say the change does happen... what happened here was we started with a local option and wen

I've noticed Seriously though I'd be properly curious to see what effect the 2019 world jamboree has on things. There will be a lot of scouts from every corner of the planet turning up, all with their own way of doing things. In 2005 I was at the European jamboree in the U.K. One side of my unit we had a polish unit, other side of them were isralies. The other side of us were Italian, next one on was Irish. Across the track from us were Dutch, Swiss, Ugandan and Portuguese units. If I recall right there were 68 countries with contingents there. It was an incredibly eye opening experie

Looking in a few observations and questions…. Any article that starts that by using a few cheesy buzz words should be binned by the editor. Painful to read. It’s now 25 years since I was a 13 year old boy (more’s the pity!) in that time I’ve noticed a couple of things change in the UK. When I was 13 it was almost unheard of to have a purely plutonic friend of the opposite sex. Yes at 13 the first hints of dating were on the cards, there was the odd friendship between boys and girls here and there. But it was a pretty unusual thing to see. I had one female school friend when I w

Back in my days when I was Cub leader...... First weekend of June was always district cub camp weekend. Friday and Saturday evenings, after the cubs were all in bed, the leaders from the various packs would gather round a fire somewhere. One year, for reasons I can't recall, that fire was in an alter fire with the legs having been removed so it was flat on the ground. It was a relatively small event one year and I was able to get quite close. Sinking quite comfortably into my camp chair I stretched out my legs (I am 6'2" so there's plenty of leg to stretch!) and it was the perfect dist

While I agree with some of your observations I would disagree that working in small groups is out dated. Less popular maybe, but not outdated Humans have evolved over many thousands of years to be social creatures. We live in families and for most of human existence villages. There is still a very basic human need to belong and that is particularly strong among teenagers. If it wasn't for that feeling we wouldn't have a fashion industry. We wouldn't have sport teams with tens of thousands of followers. We wouldn't have music festivals, churches, carnivals or weddings or all the other thing

Flip the coin for a moment.... While we may see scouts miss evenings of trips etc for sport or music or whatever remember that you won't notice it the other way around. Look at the scouts that turn up for everything. Have some of them been dropped from sports teams or orchestras because they didn't turn up because they were at scout camp? Two of my patrol leaders are also musicians. One has an armful of badges, will easily make Chief Scouts Gold, will probably end up as SPL but there's no way she'll get into the school orchestra because she's on camp when she should be practising. The

They are indeed some of my girls

The topic didn't come up in the end. They were too busy burning stuff, scouts being, well, scouts!

I agree, it's not something I'm planning on bringing up unless they want to. Not an entirely daft thought to be honest. Imagine being in your early 20s, travelling round the world where people come from miles around in their thousands to see you perform. We've all done worse things to pay the bills! She must have been having the time of her life. Then this happens. 22 people are dead Including an 8 year old girl. I suspect she's in pieces.

First of all if this is more appropriate to the politics section please feel free to move. Anyway, I got asked yesterday by @@Tampa Turtle how my scouts had reacted to Monday’s terrorist attack in Manchester and what I would say to them. Fact is as we meet on a Thursday I haven’t seen them to know. What I plan on saying, should they want to talk about it this evening, is this. Monday night’s events were tragic, evil and horrifying. I am not going to pretend to understand what goes on in the head of the people that do these things. I fear that unless you are a professional in the

To be clear I wasn't equating poltical conservatism directly with not being coed. The point was more as an example of cultural difference between our respective countries hence one shouldn't assume that where one goes the other will closely follow. One thing that always strikes me about the USA is it's extraordinary diversity in pretty much every respect. From climate to geography to religions to music to ethnic background and pretty much every other aspect of life. It's something that I think other countries can learn something from in terms of how different communities live alongside e

Just catching up with this. I think that Tyke, with all due respect, has made a common mistake among many of our country men make which is to assume that because the UK and USA share a language that we are closer culturally than we actually are. Fact is that the UK is closer to other countries in north west Europe than anywhere else. The Netherlands, Germany and in particular Denmark than any other English speaking countries with the possible exception of Australia. I suspect that at some point, probably in my life time, BSA will change with regard to girls and religion but I certainly

Ah the great British summer! Remind me, fell on a Wednesday last year didn't it?

I concur with pringles! It basically behaves like a candle. What little potatoe there is in it works like a candle wick, soaking up the melting fat and burning it. With tumble drier fluff working so well I have always wondered whether, if you could collect enough, belly button fluff would do the same job ....

Morning all Some others of you may already be aware but a few days ago a 14 year old scout in the troop where @@Tampa Turtle is ASM sadly passed away. I am in touch with TT away from this forum and as I am sure you can imagine both he and his scouts and of course the boy's family are extremely distressed. I have little doubt that they would appreciate your thoughts and prayers at what must be a terrible time for all of them.

Well here is an outline of the major political parties LGBT policies from the UK 2015 general election. The only parties not campaigning on a platform of looking to do something positive for the LGBT community were DUP (8 MPs exclusively in Northern Ireland where the mainstream parties don't even both fielding candidates because the political situation is barking mad) and UKIP with 1 MP, a single issue party that is now a non entity since the EU referendum last year. And frankly find me the UKIP voter who gave a monkey's about anything other than EU membership. That's in a total of 650 MPs

I think this is a trans atlantic difference. Equality for the LGBT community is just not considered a political issue here anymore. Sure homophobia and transphobia still exists, but it's a social problem on a par with racism and sexism. It's only political in so far as there are differences between politicians on what to do about it as opposed to there being any differences on the principle of equality for the LGBT community.

We have an evening at the end of each year where we show them off and dish out various prizes. The leaders come in dinner jackets/posh dresses. It's quite fun! The photos are the edited down selection, there were quite a few taken that weren't really that great. That's kids for you The going wasn't quite as rugged as it could be. Normally in early April there would still be a lot of snow on the mountains, albeit thawing, but this year Scotland had a very mild winter meaning by April there was next to no snow left which is a real shame.

Hopefully the final time I'll resurrect this thread but.... piccies! Took a while to colate then. How many times it's possible for one scout to bring their camera in for me to download their photos but for them to forget the cable is beyond me. But here they are! Mostly it's photos from out on the hills but there's a few taken at the station itself. http://12thcambridge.org.uk/blog/2017/05/08/high-adventure/

Sigh. Much as night follows day the extremists (of any description) threaten violence when they don't get their way. It's so sad. This girl's story has been a big story this side of the pond. The amount of coverage, while modest in absolute terms, has been extraordinary given that it's been head to head with UK local elections and forthcoming national elections and the French presidential elections. I showed the original photo to my scouts on Thursday and the older ones were properly impressed (the younger ones didn't really understand) I just hope that the online threats are just

It's an extraordinary image and one that I hope ends up in the public consciousness. With regards to the political side things are a bit different in European countries that were historically occupied by the Nazis and/or fell within the former Soviet Bloc. Scouts in those countries tend to be a lot more politically motivated. That's not to say they are ever party political, more that they are more inclined to get involved in standing up to meat heads like this lot. Quick historical fact.... scouts were heavily involved in the resistance in countries occupied by the Nazis. It was actua