Yesterday my friend Rosie came and picked me up from my house. A few days before we had packed Tilly’s big rucsac bag with clothes and everyday necessities, which Rosie’s dad put into the boot of the car. Then we went to Youlbury Scouts Camp, about an hour and a half away. My club, Cubs, had organised a week-long camp there, where we were going to do some activities a bit like PGL camp, which you go to if you’re at school. There we got up our tent and laid down our foil mats and things and put our sleeping bags on top. It looked cosy and it was really warm in our pod! Nicky, our leader, first announced that, since it was evening, we should all have hot chocolate and a little chat and then we should go to bed. This was about nine o’clock.
The two girls sleeping in the pod next to us were called Natalie and Katie. Rosie and I went up with them to the toilet block, carrying our washbags, which was about a five minute walk away. We had memorised the way there because the car park was next to the block, so we remembered where Rosie’s dad had dropped us off. We brushed our teeth and got out our torches (by now it was pitch black, especially in the shady and creepy woods, where Youlbury Scouts Camp was positioned). Natalie and Katie accidentally went the wrong way, and we had to shout their names a thousand times, since they only had our torch for light. When we found them again we went back to the camp five minutes away, nearly tripping over stumps and roots, or fallen branches.
When we got back to camp everything was deadly quiet (apart from, of course, the five boys next door to us in their tent, who were talking about how they had each punched a girl in the face before and given her a nosebleed). We crept into our sleeping bags and turned off our torches, excited about what activity we would be doing the next day. The next day, however, we didn’t do any activities – we talked about safety rules over breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and in any gap between.
The next day we went on a five hour, six mile hike. It was the hottest day at the week, and we had to put loads of sun cream on and we all had to remember our hats and water bottles. We sat down for five minutes or so with a cold drink at the pub. Whilst we were sitting down at the benches sipping icecube remains through straws, we heard a loud sort of motor noise. Everyone looked up and over the balcony to find a really old car parked in the car park. It was a sparkly blue colour, and it had two black leather benches in the back, and a horn at the side, and no doors or anything. Three men came out, one very old, and two very young. Even the waitress came running out from the pub, taking pictures of the car with some sort of emergency camera. Just by the steering wheel (which looked new and polished, but obviously old and tattered) was a sign saying something like the ‘Butchkiss’. The name of the car certainly ended with ‘kiss’, and sounded like ‘Butchkiss’. Underneath the title it said on the sign that this car was the only one left in the Universe, from 1896 or something. It was amazing!
Over the rest of the week, some of the activities were Orienteering and the Giant Swing. In Orienteering you had to find some wooden blocks on the trees in the wood, and write down the ones you found first. All the girls apart from Katie got 20, which was all of the answers correct! Katie still got something like 18 or such. The boys got around 6 each, Nicky said 😉 At the Giant Swing, Rosie and I went together at the very top height! Unfortunately for us, at our second go, the instructor and the others took forever to decide what they should say at ‘1, 2, 3, Go’. By the time they’d thought of ‘Vidae and Woggy are tepid’, we’d forgotten what it was like, so it was an entirely new experience! At the Giant Zipwire, you went on individually, and there wasn’t a seat. You were standing up mid-air without resting your feet on anything, covered in harnesses and buckles and ropes, and sent off carrying four ropes to prop you upright. Rosie went on upside down slightly, and Amelia, one of the young leaders, went on upside down fully without holding on to the four ropes! At the end, Chea (pronounced ‘Shay’), one of the instructors from South Korea, told us to unclip the metallic red clip to undo our harness. Then, three or four metres above Chea’s head, you would drop down the ropes looped on your arm and let Chea lower you to the ground. The zipwire was the best activity in my opinion. The Giant Swing wasn’t as good as the one at PGL though, firstly because Mummy wasn’t there, and secondly the one at PGL was at the end of a big hill so it seemed like you were swinging into nowhere.
I had a falling out with Rosie, and she was really mean to me and called me ‘stuck-up’, ‘mean’ and ‘uncompromising’. If we hadn’t fallen out with each other, I think the camp would’ve been much better. But I did have fun, and I spent a long time without my Daily Stair Cuddle and, moreover, Mummy. And that, Mummy says, is a very grown-up thing to do, and I feel very big about it.