Cub Report – November 2007

Carole having taken a break from Scouting in the trinity term, decided that the time was right for her to pass on the leadership of the Cub section. I would like to personally thank her for all her years of running the Cub pack, both recently and when I was a Cub there myself (which is 20 years ago in a month!)

Fortunately we have found another leader to assist in running the pack, Barbara, who was formerly at 2nd Guildford Cubs. Barbara has recently completed her Nights Away course and will be completing the last courses for her Wood Badge early next year. Her pack name is Chil, which if memory serves must be the most popular leaders name in the last 20 years at Normandy!
I should add as it may not have been reported, but I was awarded my Wood Badge at the Centenary Camp in May, and my warrant has been changed to CSL.

David continues to provide valuable assistance every week as a young leader, and hopefully Alan will manage to persuade more Explorers in the future to assist.

As of the start of this term we’ve changed the meeting time to 6:15-7:45 on Mondays.

We currently have about 20 Cubs in the pack, two have recently moved up to Scouts, and I’ve just invested 3 from the Beaver section and 1 from the waiting list. We lost five over the summer, two because of school changes, the others were either because of other activities or a lack of interest in Scouting. Another 4 will be going up to Scouts in the new year and then another 4 at Easter, but I gather we also have quite a lot of Beavers to come up at those two times.

We held a Sixers and Seconders camp on the last weekend of September, which was attended by all but one Seconder. The weekend involved them cooking their lunch both days on the altar fire, on the Saturday they cooked trout (which they prepared themselves) in newspaper with potatoes and vegetables, followed by baked apples. On the Sunday they cooked baked potatoes and chocolate/jam bananas. The weekends activities included, bivouac making, tracking, backwoods cooking, new wide games and indoor games, a campfire, learning lots of knots, and learning to put up (and take down) their hike tents! Additionally each sixer and seconder was set the task of concocting a ten minute activity for another sixer and seconder. They all rose to the challenge, and came up with an interesting mix of activities and were all far too complimentary about each other!

We’re working towards a number of badges this term, namely the Local Knowledge and Scientists. Two of the older Cubs are also working towards their Chief Scouts Silver award. We visited Guildford Fire Station with Rydes Hill Cubs and will at the end of term be going to the Pantomime with them, in which Peter Duncan is starring.

Before the summer holidays we entered 2 and a “bit” teams into the District Sports Challenge. We didn’t win the competition, but one team were the Hockey champions for the day and the “bit” team (with members from other packs) were the Football champions for the day. This month we’ll be entering two teams into the handicraft competition and hope to retain the shield.
Next year we’re planning to camp somewhere other than the Scout Hut, and possibly in the summer holidays, opposed to the May Half Term weekend.