Scouts go Microlighting

The scouts went camping at Old Hay Airstrip at the weekend. It is tucked away down some very narrow roads about 10mins from Paddock Wood in Kent.

On arriving, it took everyone right until late supper to get the tents up, but there was a wonderful moon as we all retired to a well-deserved night’s sleep (all I can say is the leaders slept well).

This was the first greenfield camp that many of the scouts had done, so there was lots of basics to cover (pitching tents, altar fires, wet pits, chemical loos, cooking for themselves, washing up).

Apart from the basics, we managed to cover knife skills – the scouts (and the cub and beaver) produced many good tent pegs and some fair attempts at cutlery. We all had an archery session c/o Carl and an enormous camp fire c/o Donald, complete with s’mores.

The catering worked out well this camp; the menu included a traditional scouting breakfast, hearty chicken stew, chocolate cake and custard, pancakes and lots of hot chocolate.

The main event was microlighting.  As usual when doing anything to do with flight, we spent the whole weekend looking at the weather.  On Saturday only three scouts got to fly before it was blown out, but on Sunday they managed to get all the scouts apart from the last three up in the air.  Overall though we had some great weather (too much sun was a problem rather than too little), it was just a bit blowy.

A big thank you to the Lee and Tony from Kent Scouts Air Activity Team