Sparkle & Ice, winter survival camp, is always interesting. We’ve had mud, rain, snow and now we were going to be camping in Storm Ciara.
Girlguiding has four flagship national events. The first-tier ones are Wellies & Wristbands, their 4-day summer festival camp and their Guides-only stadium gigs. The second-tier ones are Magic & Mayhem, which is Wellies scaled down to a circus-themed overnight event for the under-10s, Fearless Fun which is an adventure weekend for Brownies and Guides, and Sparkle & Ice, the short weekend winter survival camp.
This is the fourth Sparkle and I’ve been to them all. Sparkle 2017 was hell on Earth, a mudbath, with rain and wind, all crammed into one field with enough to entertain for four or five hours, not an entire weekend. Sparkle 2018 I taught archery from dawn to dusk but got the impression that massive improvements had been made. Sparkle 2019 I took the Rangers and it was minus four degrees overnight but otherwise very beautiful and we enjoyed it enough that we came back this year.
And what did we get this year? Storm Ciara.
It’s bad enough camping in February. Now we had a named storm crashing over our heads. We’d be camping in Storm Ciara. I like to take the Rangers because it sounds like a big exotic exciting adventurous things to tell people – especially the older Guides – about. It sounds sparkly and icy and beautiful when you hand out the forms in September but by the first weekend of February, when you’re packing your stuff, you suddenly realise you’ve done something stupid. Other people tell you you’re mad. They tell you they’ll be thinking about you on Saturday night, when they’re in their warm beds in their heated homes and you’re out in a tent with someone else’s teenagers. Last year parents around the country spent the week before camp panicking about the unreasonably cold temperatures and the centres running the events (it happens concurrently at two of Girlguiding’s Training & Activity Centres at least, maybe three) suddenly had to find indoor space for everyone. Not everyone used it. We didn’t. It meant they were prepared this year – we knew there would be somewhere to go if Ciara got really bad on Saturday evening and when we went for dinner, there were lists up to show where various units should take shelter so we knew we could always run away to the Coach House if need be. But we’d survived last year’s sub-zero camp and the winds weren’t scheduled to start until Sunday morning and besides, I’d storm-lashed the tents.
I don’t know if storm-lashing modern dome and tunnel tents is a thing. I assume we did it back in the Olden Days when we used the canvas ridge tents – I don’t remember ever doing it but I still have my old handbook and still read it occasionally so I’m familiar with the idea. In actual fact, ready for Ciara, I bought extra guy ropes and storm pegs and planned to just tie on a set of extra ropes that were definitely going to stay down. When I tied them on, I discovered that they were obscenely long and the best way to use up some of the extra rope was to cross them over, pegging the front ones where I’d put the back ones and the back ones where I’d put the front ones.
Saturday was beautiful. Blue sky, sunshine, pretty warm for February. We went and did some very basic bushcraft because I was hoping it would include water filtering, which is the last activity needed to finish a badge my Rangers started last summer. We used firesteels to set fire to cotton wool balls – we were hoping to build an actual fire but it was not to be – and we built shelters.
Then we went into an escape room set up in the tented village. I did this very escape room at an event here a few years ago, so I knew there was a key to be found in a tube and some tins to be weighed but the rest pretty much escaped my memory. We escaped in sixteen minutes.
Then it was lunchtime – the usual “collect a paper bag containing a flapjack, a packet of crisps and a piece of fruit and also pick up your choice of sandwich from cheese or ham, tuna or jam”. We sat outside our storm-lashed tents in the sunshine and supplemented our lunch with tomato soup. We’d all enjoyed it last year but this year, the tomato soup ran out before Green Dinners (we were in Green dinners!) got there so the girls were very glad we’d had it on our just-in-case shopping list.
I have a lovely lunch photo but it features the Rangers sitting outside their tent in the sun so it’s obviously not going to appear here.
First thing in the afternoon was the barrel train – eight little “barrels” towed by an ATV. The Rangers were largely of the opinion that it was sized better for Guides or Brownies and my other adult refused to even try to get in on the grounds that she’d never get out but I took the last barrel, which meant selfies without children in the background and also a big rail to help haul myself in and out. I enjoyed that barrel train a lot! That was possibly my favourite activity.
Crate stacking was temporarily closed due to the instructor’s karabiner being stuck so we went up to Appletree to cook smores over an actual roaring fire, the kind you can’t cook a marshmallow on because it’s too hot to hold it close enough for longer than a few seconds. I pulled my sleeve down over my hand but it’s a fleece and fleece is plastic and I could feel it trying to melt. So I’d have liked to have my marshmallow a bit softer but ultimately, keeping my hands was more important. The Rangers solved the difficulty by shoving theirs straight into the flame: a marshmallow that’s been literally on fire is by definition pretty well-cooked.
Then we went back to crate stacking. I’d forgotten how many people you need – two to climb, two to belay, two to pull the slack out and at least one to build. Good thing we weren’t the only ones there. My girls only managed five or six before knocking the lot to the ground, and they’d already fallen off and been put back on once. Personally, I find that two crates off the ground is more than enough.
Our ticketed activities followed very quickly after that – we’d been told we had four tickets for the same thing at the same time but actually we had two of each at the same time so the girls opted for the horse experience over the planetarium, since they’d done the planetarium last year and found it a little below their level. My current girls are grammar school girls, one doing GCSE Astronomy and both keen science fans who will argue chemistry vs biology at any opportunity and who, when asked to write random words to play Taboo with, will choose things like “auxins”, “nitrifying bacteria”, “abiotic” and “electromagnetic spectrum”. One of them is very horsey and so the horse experience of “look at the horse and you can pat its nose once you’ve done your horse induction” was even further below her level. I enjoyed the planetarium, for the record.
After that, we went into the craft room and made animals from corrugated card that was horrendously over-ordered for a previous camp. I did an owl, lovely solid thing. Ranger 1 made a sausage dog, Ranger 2 made a very delicate dolphin and Other Adult made a tiny chimp. Once I get hold of some corrugated card, I’m doing this with my Brownies. I’m sure I can figure out how to make an Easter bunny or a chicken – maybe even let their imaginations go wild, like some of the girls did this weekend.
Activities finished at five but Green Dinner was last and so we had an hour and a half to kill. We went back to the tents and tried to get properly set up and ready for bed – everything inside that needed to be, torches handy, flasks accessible for hot chocolate later on. Dinner was spag bol with garlic bread – and because we were last, it was very obvious when there was garlic bread left over. In fact, as we were leaving, a fresh basket was brought out and we were able to grab a slice of hot fresh crunchy bread to carry away.
There was a campfire in 2017, I didn’t see one in 2018 when I was volunteering and I’m reasonably confident there wasn’t one last year. But there was this year, although the steep-sided campfire circle was treacherously muddy. I added a couple of songs to my repertoire and I think the Rangers enjoyed themselves. It was a good fire – one of the staff looking after it threw a big branch of something leafy on and that sent sparks up. The group sitting behind us were very enthusiastic, although in their pirate song, they go “north south east west” instead of “this way, that way, forwards and backwards”.
Hot chocolate and chips in the night cafe was almost last. We’d planned to go to the chill-out zone for board games but we ended up just sitting in the night cafe until the closing ceremony, which consisted of a short speech and announcement and old-fashioned Taps sung by lantern light.
And then it was time to retreat to our tents. We filled our hot water bottles and we got into our good sleeping bags in our storm-lashed tents and while I never sleep much in a tent, I’ve heard no complaints about anyone being even a little bit chilly. The wind blew more than I expected but nothing that felt like the forecast 70mph gusts. In the morning, some of the Ranger guys were looser than I would have liked, they’d lost a front peg owing to putting it in backwards and the leader tent rear guy had come off but the storm guys were standing good and firm. I’d have liked to see half the other tents in the field collapsed but modern tents are built to withstand a bit of wind and our storm lashing was a bit of an over-precaution.
I know Storm Ciara was pretty dramatic across the country but we were in the original amber warning zone and all we got was a stiff breeze. It was just an averagely miserable winter day. Pretty wet and breezy enough for most of the activities to be cancelled. Other Leader had pointed out that things like the cinema weren’t scheduled for Sunday and I said that if I was running this event and had to cancel all the outdoor activities, I’d be putting the indoor ones back on and over breakfast, the lead volunteers were coming round with amended activity sheets – yes, the cinema was on, the escape rooms had moved to one of the houses, they’d opened the indoor traverse wall and they’d also put fencing on in the marquee. To be honest, by the time we’d packed up and struck camp, we were all cold and wet. We warmed up in the craft room and eventually made a whole new set of animals and then, since there were only fifteen minutes of activity time left, we decided there was precious little point in ambling the site for another hour and a half and left early. One of my Rangers hates climbing and I can teach fencing any time we feel like it.
My biggest fear for the weekend had been driving home across exposed dual carriageway in a relatively tall car but that was no problem, except the driver believing that demisting a windscreen is done by blasting freezing air at it for ten seconds every two minutes. And also that we packed four people and all their camping stuff in a Citroen C3 Picasso. It’s not as roomy as it looks when it’s empty. But it was only a forty-five minute drive and I turned my heating up to maximum when I got back to my own car.
Tents are now drying all across my house. I had a bath and a nap and although Saturday was perfect, all we’ll remember this time next year is being wet and cold and miserable on Sunday. We camped in Storm Ciara and survived.