Scout Camp at Decoy Broad

Over the weekend of the 9th to 11th June the annual District Water Activities Mayhem camp took place at Decoy Broad, where 11 Troops out of 13 from the District were represented. This popular event encouraged a total of 54 Leaders along with 176 scouts all aiming to have a great weekend taking an active part in a total of 8 activities which were both on water and land. The camp was supported by 11 members of the District Team along with Group Supporters and other Section Leaders all helping to run the various activities throughout the weekend.

On Friday evening, they all arrived and set up camp ready for the weekend, in bed and quiet for 11pm… no chance, but that’s typical of the first night at camp! Both days were split into activity sessions lasting 1 ¼ hours with breaks in between; there were 5 activity sessions on the Saturday and 3 on the Sunday. Both mornings started off with flag break, on the Saturday the 16th Norwich Sea Scouts had the honour and on the Sunday, it was 1st Drayton who also led the short Scout’s Own which was very thought provoking and an eye opener to all. It was good to see the different styles of flag break that Sea and Land scouts adopt.

Because of the high numbers attending this year, we had to run a ticket system where the scouts were allocated an activity for each session. If they didn’t want to take part in that activity they could swap the activity for another at the swap shop or swap with other scouts in their Troop, there were not many scouts that didn’t do an activity if any. The activities that the scouts did were Shooting, Archery, Kayaking, Sit-Ons, Gigs, Catapults, Tomahawk Throwing, Crate Stacking, Sailing, Raft Building, Slack Line and Craft activities, which were Soap Carving, Para-cord Pete and Glass Engraving. Tomahawk throwing was a new activity this year and proved very popular with both the scouts and the leaders as did all the 3 craft activities, soap carving enabled the scouts to show their skills in design and then carving it out, Para-cord Pete was a key ring figure in various colours of para-cord and the glass engraving enabled them to engrave a pre-copied design or have a go at free hand and it gave everybody a memento of the weekend.

The weather again was very favourable with plenty of sunshine, warm temperatures and light winds despite an early brief shower on the Saturday morning. After a long and exhausting day on Saturday the 27th Norwich provided the evening activity, a tug of war competition, all troops took part and the competition was won by 1st Taverham “A”, this was followed by the traditional Leaders versus Scouts match which was won by the Scouts.

Saturday evening was capped off with a campfire run by Mike Pepperell, a Youth Training Officer with Norfolk Fire Service and ex Scout Leader, all the troops did a song or stunt during the campfire and everybody enjoyed themselves.

All the activities over the weekend were run by the leaders on camp and were supported by additional adults who kindly gave up their time. The District would like to thank Sean Lock and the leaders from 1st Spixworth for all their support in the water activities, also to Mike for giving up his evening to spend with us at camp, to Ian ‘ Daffy ’ De’Ath for running the para-cord activity and to all the other leaders and adults who helped, its much appreciated.