Cubs Reports – 2010 AGM

We currently have 18 Cubs in the pack, which is down slightly on this time last year. We’re now in a reversed situation to last year, with lots of Cubs having moved or shortly moving up to Scouts, but not that many coming up from the Beaver section.

During the summer holiday last year, our Assistant Cub Scout Leader, Suzy, took on a new job that due to the working hours meant she was no longer able to assist with Cubs. We have been fortunate since then to have had Charlotte (Hathi) helping, but she unfortunately can only help until the end of this term as she is off to University. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the parents that have helped out on Monday evenings, and also our two young leaders from the Explorers section. Without all their assistance we would not have been able to run the pack evenings, so as always we are on the lookout for new leaders/occasional helpers – if you or anyone you know is interested please do get in touch.

Onto what we’ve been up to over the last year:

We’ve entered a number of district competitions, firstly the District Sports Challenge, which took place around this time last year. As with other years we didn’t win the overall title, but were champions in a couple of the individual sports.

We entered two teams into the Guildford West District Cub Cooking Competition. The challenge was to cook a two course meal from scratch on gas burners with ingredients costing less than £5. Additionally the recipe has to consist of certain “core” ingredients set out by County. Both teams cooked a somewhat ambitious menu of my devising, consisting of “Fruity Pork Meatballs with Onion and Mushroom Mash and Courgette”, followed by “Vanilla rice with a fresh strawberry sauce”. Both our teams did very well with one of them winning and taking part in the county regional final. On the day out of 4 other districts that were supposed to take part only Godalming turned up and they went through to the County final. However both teams do deserve congratulations as the dishes they prepared from scratch involved a lot more work than other groups entries.

We also took part in the district handicraft competition, which was slightly different in that all the teams were given the materials and instructions to make a Zoetrope and a paper rocket (with bellows). This proved to be a great challenge, not only to the Cubs, but also to myself as I was somehow appointed to help all the teams folding their bellows! We entered two teams and one took the runners up spot.

We also entered some teams in the District Indoor Challenge, which this year was a great egg race.
As reported last year, being the reigning champions of the District Quiz, meant that it fell on us to organise this years. We had General Knowledge, Science + Nature, Landmarks, Scouting Knowledge, Sports + Leisure, What’s that Noise and Practical Scouting rounds. Whilst we didn’t win all those who took part should be congratulated, as should the rest of the pack who assisted in running the evening.

Last week saw our Annual Camp at Bentley Copse. We again camped in the Nest, and had an increase in numbers from last year with 12 Cubs camping. Asides from a little rain on the Tuesday the weather was good. I’d like to thank Michael and Louise Stanton for transporting all our equipment to and from camp. Additionally the camp would not have been possible without the assistance of Roger Prime (or Bagheera as he’s now known) who helped for the whole camp and Simon Tod (Shere Khan) and Clive Hillyer (Kaa) who also shared helping duties. Again thanks to the DC for once again organising a wonderful menu and teaching the Cubs cooking skills each night. Now our Cubs have a short presentation about what they did on Camp….

Just in closing I would say that as previously mentioned we are on the lookout, as always, for more leaders. On that subject, we are as always very grateful to the parents, who’ve given up their time to help at meetings over the last year.