Gilwell 24

Last weekend was the national gathering of explorer scouts from across the country 'Gilwell 24' at Gilwell park scout activity center.

We arrived at the aldi car park in bradly stoke at 4:00am on Saturday morning after only sleeping for 1/2 hour the night before. We then got on the coach and were given the itinerary for the WSJ conference (where the leaders had told us we were going (they had faked the itinerary))

We then left the car park and traveled back towards Bath. We then ended up stopping to pick up some other explorers at the Bath exit so I'd wasted about an hour :(. After this we continued along the M4 and played bingo (typically Kev used an i pad app to generate the numbers). We played this several times and I won once (the prize was a necker with 'Gilwell 24' embroidered which was our first clue)

We then stopped at Reading services at about 6:30am.

Once back on the coach we continued playing bingo and Kevin told us that we were going on a ferry and hinted at Disney land. Eventually the leaders admitted that there was no 'WSJ conference' and that we were going to 'Gilwell 24'.

Our coach came in the back entrance of Gilwell and we quickly got off. We then walked up to our site where scouts from Weston super-mare had already but up our tents, and we were told that they'd also be catering for us. We were then given a Gilwell 24 t-shirt, a security pass and and activity sticker. We dumped our bags in the tents and went up to the main 'arena' where at 8:00am we made to dance the macarana, YMCA and the fast food song/div>

We then went to the main square and used our stickers to book 'laser mission' for 11:40am. 

We then went and picked up two more stickers each from Kevin and went to look around the area. We went on some of the rides in the 'fair ground' area of the site and booked wood turning for after lunch.

We then went up to laser mission on time but it ended up not happening for another minutes because they were running very far behind. We all went on the red team for laser mission and we won against the other (blue) team. 

We then went back up to our campsite for lunch of cup a soup before rushing off to the wood turning (we were late because the laser mission had been running so far behind) where we were each assigned a wood lathe and a tutor. My tutor suggested making a honey dipper so I did and although I was the last the finish it came out very well. Everyone else made either mushrooms or rolling pins out of the wood. 

We then watched the police do a riot drill and got to through sponges and blocks of wood at them. Afterwards we went to the carnival area and went on some of the rides. We then went on some of the bridges made out of pioneering poles etc. Then we went to the main square where we sighed up for a hint around the site. This took us over an hour even though it was only meant to take 2011 minutes and we still got it wrong! After this we had dinner and were given some energy drinks to try and help us stay up all night. We then went (in the light rain) to the carnival rides again and then decided that we would go for a sunset swim. This was nice and warm although it made it seem colder when we got out. We then had a shower to warm us up and put on clean cloths I then went to buy a torch (which it turned out they didn't sell) while the others went to drop some stuff off at the camp. We met up again and made twists which for the first time I didn't burn or under cook. We then went to the 'cinema' to watch harry potter but for some reason it wasnt on so we watched some random film about adoption and then cool runnings. After that we decided that we could sit down in a dark warm room any longer without sleeping so we left and went up to our camp. After some talking, at 3am, some of us went down and bought some chips and went climbing. We then wandered around some more before going to a large field to watch the. Sunrise (which we couldn't see because of the clouds). Afterwards we went back to camp where we were each assigned a nickname, some of which made sense although mine didn't - I was called 'Jasper'. After this we headed down the main arena where we were made to sing the same songs as before. We then were told the winners of some awards (none of us won). Then we got our kit and got on the coach to leave.