Scouts from the 4th (St John’s), 9th (Seal) and 15th (Otford) went on a night-hike on Friday.
45 Scouts in seven separate groups spent the evening walking the footpaths of Otford and Shoreham on a night-time navigation exercise. Despite the weather trying its best to discourage everyone, they all set early on Friday evening.
Scout teams walked one of two courses, and each course could be clockwise or anti-clockwise, and with or without a leader. We also had a secondary start point at Shoreham Station to give us some more capacity
The main course included Otford, Romney Street, Shoreham. The other one was a little flatter that missed out Romney Street but went further towards Farningham.
All of the navigation was done by the scouts, although the groups with leaders did have someone on hand to make sure decisions were actually being taken an scouts weren’t ‘just following the path’.
The scouts did really well. All the groups finished, although we did have a couple mid-course retirements and one of our (unaccompanied) groups showed itself to be ‘navigationally challenged’ (compare to the actual routes at the top of the post). In the end they walked further than anyone else!
Some of our scouts had a mid-hike sing-song
The night finished with a hot-dog (or two), a mug of hot chocolate and a cookie before bed. 🌭☕🍪🛌💤