Posts Tagged ‘Newtownpark Scouts’
Halloween Camp
November 1st, 2011
This weekend the Ventures organised a joint camp with Newtownpark Avenue. Everyone had a great weekend, thank you to all of the leaders who made the weekend possible.
We started on Friday with a few games to help everyone get to know each other, and then continued with a film in the leaders room. Eventually everyone got to bed and some of us even got some sleep.
On Saturday we all got up (or were dragged out of bed). We headed out to killiney hill, losing a shoe on the way. When we got there we split into two groups (girls and boys). The girls (and Fionnán) went orienteering while the boys went Rock Climbing. Both activities went really well and fortunatley this time round none of the boys decided to climb upside down. All the boys gave the climbing a go, and some even made it to the top twice. When we got back to the car park we found that the girls also got on well, having only missed one marker. After a somewhat wet lunch the groups swapped over. The girls enjoyed the climbing although not quite as much as Fionnán, who wanted to go again and again and again and again and again…. Some of the girls were scared but everyone gave it a go, and the weather had improved to we had a great afternoon. The boys came and found us once they had finished orienteering, they also missed only one orienteering marker. At which point Kevin realised that he may have possibly placed the marker in the wrong place! Once back in the car park we met Conor and packed away all of the rock climbing equipment. Oisín then organised everyone to played a game of catch the flag, followed by Tip the Can and Hide and Go Seek. When we got back to the den, eventually in the case of the group who took the DART, we made dinner which was Pasta Bolognese. After dinner Kevin lit the fire and all of Ventures sat around throughly intent on their various whittling projects. Some made spoons, others knives, others arrows and some were even making wands to go with their Halloween costumes. Later on Fionn got very excited (after some smores) about the prospect of carving a pumpkin in the shape of a Creeper (something from Minecraft). So everyone split into groups and went inside to carve pumpkins and they all turned out really well, there should be photos up here soon.
Sunday morning we were busy as we had our Tidy Towns litter pick-up organised. So we had breakfast and walked down to Blackrock Park, Orla kindly put the equipment in her car and drove it down for us. We then spent about an hour collected rubbish in the park and continued all the way back to the den. Everyone did a great job, and we had plenty of rubbish by the time we got back to the den. Then each patrol was given a country on which they had to put together a project for the rest of the afternoon. The girls got Mexico and the Boys got China, the posters that they put together are displayed in the Den on the Venture notice board. They also had to cook a meal from their country. The girls made some delicious Tacos and Nachos and the boys made a really good stir fry with Noodles and spring rolls. All of the food was excellent and Oisín and Lainey did a really good job of cleaning up afterwards while the rest of us got back to our whittling. Then unfortunately about half of our number had to go home, because they had Halloween parties to go to. So the rest of us settled down in the Leaders room to watch Young Frankenstein. We then played a very interesting game of Switch where everyone showed everyone else their cards, and mine were looked at while I was out of the room, twice! We then, after much debate, watched X-Men:The Last Stand and went to bed.
Monday was boring as all we did was clean up, smash a pumpkin and go home. Overall it was a really good weekend and hopefully we will be able to run more joint activities in the future.
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Smelivin 2011
April 19th, 2011
We were the patrol leader and assistant patrol leader on the 2011 Smelvin, on my team was Fionn (me/PL) Emma (me to/APL) Andrew, Abby, Cillian, Cliona, Meghan and Alex. The theme was I’m a scout Get me out of here!
It was really good fun, we came fifth out of eight troops we did well in some activities like “bivvie” which was a backwoods challenge, we also did well in the T-shirt competition (big thanks to Hugh and Niamh) we also did good in the cooking and some of the other activities.
We didn’t win but we still all had loads of fun working as a team, and made loads of new friends. The other groups were Dun Laoghaire, Tullow, Newtownpark, Cornelscourt and Stillorgan.
On the first day all we did was set up camp and we also started to do some of our pioneering, and we had some soup that Megan made on our gas cooker.
The next morning, Saturday, we got up really early and finished off setting up our camp. After we had our breakfast we where told to go to our activities, we did water, first aid, bivvie, we built chariots, and we also did a bushtucker trial in witch we had to eat lambs heart (which everyone loved). Then we went back to our camp we cooked curry (koala guts and woodlice) we then we then had brownies (kangaroo guts) and melted gummy worm they where lovely, we made them on the Dutch oven. After dinner we had a big camp fire with all the groups. We had to do these funny skits or sing songs relating to the theme. We did a song.
The next morning, Sunday morning, we raced the chariots BIGGEST EPIC FAIL.Then we packed up everything pretty fast. Later we we went to the ceremony when we found out who won the different categories like the cooking competition and logbook. We also found out who came in what place. Tullow were third, Newtownpark second and Dun Laoghaire first. First and second go on to the Phoenix, the national competition.
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