I spent last weekend at Girlguiding’s flagship annual event, the massive festival-themed camp Wellies & Wristbands. I’ve done quite a lot of camping and quite a lot of Guide camping but Pixie, my other leader…. is not very experienced.
So here are ten things you should know before taking your Guides to camp:
1 Guide leaders should have sleeping bags that keep them warm enough that their complaining the next morning doesn’t induce a desire to strangle them in their fellow leaders. You don’t have to spend a fortune but you can up your budget a little bit because you’ll use that sleeping bag regularly for a long time.
2 Guide leaders should have full waterproofs. We know Guides don’t have good kit because it’s not worth spending the money when they’ll outgrow it in a year but leaders should have a waterproof jacket and waterproof trousers.
3 A knife is a really useful item to have at camp. Mine got used to cut up bunting to decorate two tents rather than create a garrote wire between the two, and also to tighten the little screw that very nearly fell out of my glasses.
4 You need to keep your clothes in your bag, preferably in the sleeping compartment of the tent, to stop them getting damp, especially if you’re unlucky enough to have heavy rain all day. Clothes scattered in the porch is a terrible idea. Even better, invest in some drybags.
5 Guides will lose and/or break their phones. Don’t let them bring the phones just because it’s a special camp. Don’t waste your own battery playing games in bed when you know you’ll potentially need your phone in the morning to advise parents of your travel plans.
6 It’s always the parents who do the bedding rolls before Guides depart to camp. That means none of the Guides know how to make them themselves before they leave at the end. Drum it into them weeks in advance because carrying their bedding shoved into a bin bag is a pain.
7 Tent inspections may seem mean, especially at a low-pressure high-fun festival camp like Wellies & Wristbands. But they’re necessary to make sure clothes don’t get left in the porch and phones don’t get lost.
8 You need shoes sturdy enough to cross a gravelly car park in. I can’t comprehend a leader complaining that their feet hurt crossing a patch of gravel.
9 There’s no point in demanding silence from the Guides at night. We all know they’re not going to sleep so don’t try to enforce it. Just demand that while they’re awake all night, they keep their voices down so people in nearby tents can sleep. I never expected this to work but it does.
10 Don’t bring an airbed. Just don’t. They’re so much effort to inflate, they deflate so easily and so often, it only takes the tiniest bit of damage to puncture them, they’re a solid block of cold un-insulatable air underneath you and they make so much noise. Just get a self-inflating mat and a good sleeping bag.
If this post was useful, or interesting, or entertaining – if you got anything of value from this post at all, please consider dropping a few pennies in my virtual tip jar. Guide leaders don’t get paid and our experience & patience is invaluable.