National Beaver Scout Camp

Larch Hill

The Beaver motto is BE PREPARED and we had planned for this camp for ages.  The Elders helped too by organizing the bus. When we arrived on the Saturday morning the field was full of Beaver Scouts busy helping to put up their tents and as we had practiced this over the last few weeks we quickly got to try out our new skills. There were tents of all shapes and colours and even a huge wooden spire structure that was HUGE!!

Everybody was dressed in safari outfits or dressed as animals and even a few Indians appeared. The Camp Chief appeared from the centre of the wooden spire to mark the opening of the camp. The sound was amazing with all subcamps trying to outdo the other demonstrating their new musical instruments. After the opening we went down to the another field.  In this field there were five bases, each lasting about 20 mins , we made bracelets with beads,  branded woggles with hot branding irons, made some balloon animals , bounced non-stop on a bouncy castle and made some bread twists over hot embers.

After dinner we started a treasure hunt.  We had to find clues around Larch Hill and the answer to this was DOLMEN. We were also given a picture of a staff member, so we had to find the staff member in the Dolmen field and  when we found him, he gave us instructions where to find the treasure. Just in time we found the treasure and made our way to the campfire. The fire was blazing and with Ger leading the campfire he had us all singing and dancing. It was my first really big campfire and I was so excited, there were over 600 people at the campfire! We all left the campfire humming our favourite songs and returned to the campsite where we had some hot chocolate and then after brushing our teeth settled down into our sleeping bags. We talked for a while but my eyes got heavy and I soon fell asleep.

On Sunday morning the sun was shining again. At half ten all the subcamps were gathered again and we all went to the spiritual field to take part in a Scouts Own. We all sang a few songs and said a few prayers. It was lovely in the sunshine.

On the way home we had a short quiz asking what we enjoyed most and what we might change. So we planned, completed the camp and reviewed the camp. It was a great weekend full of adventure and we got to meet so many other Beaver Scouts from around the country I am really looking forward to the next camp.