Over the years, many people have bemoaned the lack of adult Brownie badges. One in four women in the UK have been involved in Girlguiding at some point in their lives and anyone who’s ever earned a badge as a Brownie or a Guide feels, however deep down in their soul it is, that it’s unfair that we have to go through the rest of our lives slogging away at stuff with no badge as reward. I daresay there are adult ex-Scouts with similar feelings. The one everyone wants right now is Adulting – to get a badge for cleaning the kitchen and making their own appointments and looking after their finances and so on. And I’m right there with you. I have some vague notes on a few badges I was considering putting together for camping and walking etc and I still do challenge badges for myself – in fact, I have a tag for them on this blog.
But last month, the hero of the decade stepped up with the unexpected creation of the Rebel Badge Book – a book of 52 themed badges aimed at the sort of adults who wish they could still do their Brownie and Scout interest badges. Yes, it includes an Adulting badge! But as per the usual badge schemes, this book covers a wide array of interests. I won’t spoil it but the badges are grouped under six themes and if you earn a certain number from each theme, you can get the theme patch, which is basically the same concept as Collective Emblems from the 80/90s Guide Badge Book. The themes are Creative, Global, Grown Up, Self Aware, Wellness and – my specialist area! – Wild. There are nine badges under the Wild theme and you get the “collective emblem” for completing five of them.
This post is about the Water Sports badge, which I’ve finished. I’ve also done Adventurer – or at least I hope I will have by the time this is published. Next summer I’m going to do Camper and I’m going to have a go at Wild Swimmer because learning to not be petrified of the sea will help my kayaking. Then that leaves me a choice of four others. I’m not going to worry about picking one just yet. I’m also working on Writer, from the Creative theme – spend six months writing a thing, I’ve got half an eye on Linguist from Global, Gardener from Grown Up and Fitness from Wellness. I’m really enjoying having a proper set of badges that are aimed at my age group for the first time since I left Guides.
Deciding to do your Water Sports badge in October isn’t a great idea. Basically, the badge syllabus is “over a period of up to three months, try at least five of the following activities”. You’re allowed to backdate. Now, if I backdate to my entire life, I could have helped myself to that badge the moment I read the book. But there’s no point in doing that if the purpose of the book is to give me fun stuff to do. I backdated as far as September because I’d done my sea kayaking half day introduction and my canoeing lesson since then. That left three further activities to squeeze in by the end of November.
Activity 1: Sea Kayaking
The book says “try”. How do you interpret that? Does that have to be five new activities that you’ve never tried before? Because I’ve tried a lot of stuff before. But for several years, before it got discontinued about… what, three, four? years ago, my Rangers did the Look Wider programme, in which for each of eight different themed areas, you “try” three things, take one thing further and take another thing even further. I may have “tried” kayaking before, several times. I may even have taken it further enough, if that’s a sentence that makes sense, to have done my Discover and Explore awards earlier this year. But I reckon sea kayaking is a very different beastie and that sea kayaking half-day course was “taking my kayaking further” which is even better than merely “trying”. Although you could also argue that I’ve never actually been in a sea kayak with a spraydeck before and so it was indeed “trying something new”.
Activity 2: Canoeing
Same with canoeing – I’ve splish-splashed my way up the river a couple of times before but having an actual lesson and learning the strokes to control it properly is taking it further. Huh, turns out I never blogged about that. Well, back in late September I had a one-to-one lesson on the river in how to paddle a Canadian canoe solo in which I never quite mastered the j-stroke, did ok with the c-stroke and figured out the draw stroke in thirty seconds after never mastering it on my Explore course.
Activity 3: Paddleboarding
My third activity, this time done deliberately for the badge, was my paddleboarding trip while I was in Cornwall and Devon last month. Yes, I’ve paddleboarded before and no, I didn’t have a lesson or do anything particularly radical with it. But it’s another paddlesport and so I attempted to apply what I learned in my kayaking and canoeing lessons to the paddleboard, with varying levels of success. Also, I think a paddleboard on a forty metre deep massive lake is a very different proposition to a paddleboard on a waist-deep overgrown pond, which is where I’ve used a paddleboard before. It wasn’t something brand new but it’s been over a year since I’ve done it, the circumstances were different and I applied new experience to it. It’s also something I wouldn’t have bothered doing if not for the badge and if a watersports badge gets me out and doing watersports I wouldn’t have otherwise done, I reckon it’s doing its job, even if the activity isn’t something brand new to me.
Activity 4: Rowing
My fourth activity, also done deliberately for the badge, was rowing. I tried this back in 2019 and it didn’t go particularly well. I have a history of returning to something I was bad at after a long gap only to find I mysteriously haven’t improved. This time it took three attempts just to figure out which way the boat and I were both supposed to be going, which wasn’t a great beginning. I realised that I can use one oar at a time to turn the boat in the direction I want, with all the ease of a kayak, except that I’m going backwards and my brain can’t cope with which way I’m trying to turn backwards, especially when you add in the complication of remembering which way the oar should be shoving while the other oar, forgotten and abandoned, drags in the water. Turn = great, direction = terrible. Oh, and if you get too close to anything, the oars are locked in place so you can’t haul them hastily on board to stop them catching on trees, reeds or moored boats. I finished up my attempt with a stream of invective aimed at the river, the moored boats and myself, just in time to see a boat owner poke his head up to see who was so furious at his boat. In conclusion, I can’t row and I think I’ve given it a fair enough trial to say that I’m going back to canoeing or kayaking next time.
Activity 5: Sailing
My final activity – well, this was where not doing it in the summer started to cause trouble. Mid-October is not the time to decide you’re going to do a watersports badge in the UK. This was literally the week when all the watersports centres closed down for the winter. But there’s an academy that seems to stay open all year and I got a sailing lesson booked in. Which was promptly cancelled because of the autumn weather. Twice. I began to think I was going to have to go with doing it within the spirit of three months rather than actually literally within three months because it wasn’t really my fault the weather wasn’t cooperating. The day of the second attempt dawned ok at home but was too windy down at the shore. The day of the third attempt was beautiful – if I’m honest, the idea of sailing in late November wasn’t all that appealing but there was blue sky and sunshine and the centre still made two half-hearted attempts at cancelling, one of them while I was standing outside the changing room in a wetsuit and one neoprene bootie. The wind was ok right then but due to get up a bit more than I’d probably enjoy and throw some nice gusts at me into the bargain. But I’d driven down, found somewhere free to park – oh yes, at Sandbanks! – and I wasn’t giving up so late in the day.
So out we went. I’ve sailed before but not for five years. My romantic idea back then was that I’d be able to hire a dinghy and spend some beautiful summer days on the water and it turned out that first and foremost, sailing is really complicated and second, I really don’t like falling in the water. My plan is never to capsize, obviously, but sometimes the boat leans in a terrifying way that makes me feel like I’m going to fall backwards into the water. Good news: this time, we did not capsize! The original plan was that I’d sail the tiny single-hander by myself with my instructor hovering next to me in the safety boat but I think I made it quite clear I wasn’t anywhere near ready for that. All we did was sail backwards and forwards across the same 300 or so metres of reasonably shallow sea, tacking at each end. I guess that’s your first basic move. If you can’t do that, you can’t sail.
We started with me just worrying about the tiller, moved onto me holding the mainsheet as well while we sailed between our two tack points and finished with me holding the mainsheet while I tacked, so that was progress. I admit that most of the time I dropped it in a panic but that’s ok, the tiller is the priority and once I was round, I could gather everything up again. No, I still don’t feel like I can hire a dinghy and go out for myself for the day but I feel a little more like I could do this again next summer and maybe even do it by myself with the instructor nearby rather than in the boat. It was a tiny little 11ft 5in RS Quba, whereas I learned in a 15ft 10in Wayfarer, which requires two people and also weighs a ton when you’re hauling it out of the water. I think I could learn to tack by myself in a Quba, when the weather’s a bit better.
So that was my five activities done, and despite the number of sailing cancellations, all within the three months! Actually, I ordered the badge in time to present it to myself straight after my original sailing lesson so it’s been sitting here for three and a half weeks and at last, I’ve actually achieved it.
Update on the Adventurer badge: I’ve got my fifth activity booked in for Saturday, so in 48 hours I’ll have finished that one too.
This badge – and Adventurer – also helpfully says “if you complete a second set of five activities you may claim a second badge” so I think next summer I might look into doing a different five watersports. Maybe. Maybe I can get out to Croatia or Italy or somewhere a bit warmer and try snorkelling with one of Decathlon’s full-face snorkel masks. Someone on Twitter a while back went to the Lee Valley White Water Centre and that strikes me as the sort of place that could give me a “try” of several activities without frightening me half to death. You know, even this summer I didn’t think of myself as a watersports sort of person. I was just the sort of person who quite liked but was terrible at kayaking and was terrified of the water and now here I am with one Water Sports badge in hand, making plans for a second!
And that’s the influence of having a set of challenge badges to push me to try new things and do fun stuff and develop my interests. It’s very easy to mock adults who yearn for Brownie badges but they can be quite the force for good. What was I saying just the other day – well, last month – about personal development and new skills? Here it is in action, only presented in a way that doesn’t look too intimidating. I reckon you should get a copy of the book and find yourself a badge or two to complete.