Scouts Weekend Camp at Hamlet Wood

In late September, 13 scouts and 5 leaders [I was just a day visitor] enjoyed a weekend camp at Hamlet Wood Scout Campsite, which is near East Farleigh. We’ve not camped there since well before COVID-19, and it was great to return to such a nice site, surrounded by trees [yes, I know the clue is in the name!]. Well, the trees are taller, and plenty of wood for cooking fires, campfires etc. Oh yes, and they’ve rebuilt the toilet block!

As usual, the sun shone and nearly all had a great time, developing their camping skills, but mainly just having fun.

Scouts used our new ‘air-beam’ tents, which are straightforward and relatively speedy to erect – well, we had practised in the HQ.

Hamlet Woods is one of Kent Scout training centres and is home to serious pioneering equipment, so we used a set of huge spars [that’s Scout-speak for big poles, well 15 feet in old money], together with smaller ditto and lots of different colour-coded ropes of differing size and lengths, oh yes, and a set of waterproofed instruction sheets – much head-scratching! Well, I kept out of it, just offering comments and advice. Anyway, the mighty construction resolved itself into a pretty impressive giant swin

g boat, just like an old-time fairground ride, great for two scouts at a time. It was good fun, and lots of practical skills were learned.

To summarise the weekend – we must get back to doing this more often!

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