This post has already been through several drafts, with titles like “I got my Going Away With licence!” and “I nearly got my Going Away With licence!” but the reality is… I nowhere near got my Going Away With licence. I did organise a Ranger camp single-handedly though, and I’m going to tell you all about it.
It started in April when we switched the signatories to the Ranger bank account and the division commissioner said I’d inherited a certain amount of money which I may want to spend to convince the older Guides that they want to be Rangers – hoodies or merch or an event or something. I opted not for non-uniform because that makes it harder for them to want the uniform they should be wearing, and the Ranger merch is a bit uninspiring. Wellies & Wristbands? No, that would wipe out my brand new bank account and to give them enough to not wipe it out just wasn’t enough to touch the total cost of that event. But a camp? I could organise a camp.
There are two major deadlines. You have a Residential Event Notification Form which goes to your commissioner at twelve weeks before and at four weeks before. This day was fourteen weeks before the only dates I could do. Time for admin and plenty of time for organising! Well, turns out it takes longer than that. It took a week for the campsite to come back to me to say they didn’t have space for us that weekend, another week for them to come back suggesting other dates and then another week for the second campsite to come back to us. It was four weeks and two days before camp when I finally knew for certain that I had enough girls for the camp to go ahead at all. We were offered a third leader, our main leader volunteered, that third leader pulled out – all without me ever seeing her – and all in all, I spent the fourteen weeks between April and mid-July in a permanent state of panicked stress, wishing I’d never started this. It wasn’t until I knew it was definitely going ahead that I contacted my mentor, who didn’t get back to me for over a fortnight and although I was reasonably sure I could tick off most of the things in the book (I bought the book years ago!), I wasn’t exactly sorry when I finally emailed her and said “Hey, we think maybe it’s best if this is a practice instead of an assessed licence camp?” (She agreed. We amended the REN – which my commissioner signed 48 hours before camp began, after I’d chased her and she’d signed the wrong part four days before camp – extra stress at the last minute!)
We arrived at 3pm on Friday to get set up so we were ready for the girls to start arriving at 5pm, all four of them. Yeah, lot of stress for just four teenagers. It was raining. It was really raining. Our pitch was flooded and at one point I screamed “How dare you!” at the sky. After fourteen weeks of stress, to give me rain like this?? At one point I said “Well…. it’s too late to cancel now” and our main leader put on her schoolteacher voice and said “Why is it too late?”. Fourteen weeks of stress, that’s why! She had to move her car from reception round to the back of the site to bring it to our pitch so I said “Well, while you’re fetching your car, maybe I’ll pop into reception, ask if they have any indoor accommodation and how much it is”. Oh, best idea ever! They did have accommodation and for a reasonably reasonable price! We leaders had small rooms with bunk beds and the girls slept in the hall on nice thick mattresses, and because there were loads of mattresses and we’re pretty chilled, when they asked if they could have two, we didn’t mind. Three, I drew the line at. That’s a bit high and a bit unstable.
This is my first camp with this division and they have a tradition of black and white gingham camp neckerchiefs and they get a name tape with the camp details and sew it on the back. The name tapes are a tradition I picked up from a Switzerland trip in 2014 so I happened to have ordered the tapes. But we were each presented with a camp neckerchief and our main leader insisted on sewing on the tapes there and then so they wouldn’t get lost. I’ve never had a camp neckerchief before. It feels like a rite of passage and I’m surprisingly proud of mine. She says, with no idea where it’s gone, having not seen it for a week…
We cooked hot dogs on Friday evening and played cards and then when we could delay it no more, we went outside and did a scavenger hunt, which just so happened to be a Unit Meeting Activity – my girls hate the programme but one of them wants her Ranger Gold so I’m slipping in programme activities where I can. This weekend, obviously, we were working towards our Have Adventures Theme Award. We did hot chocolate and went to bed and that was Friday.
On Saturday we took our gas stoves outside to the BBQ area opposite our front door and cooked pancakes and bacon and had maple syrup and cereal and juice just as if we were camping. It was a huge faff, especially as we took the building’s china Ikea plates out rather than just use our plate bags but it was good to cook outside. The girls got on with it with the minimum of fuss and the two oldest jumped – every single time for the entire weekend, actually – at the opportunity to do the washing-up.
We rearranged the programme to take advantage of the not-terrible weather and we went outside to do a Skills Builder activity – making a shelter. There was plenty of woodland around the edge of the field, I provided string and a groundsheet and they raided the wood store. It wasn’t a brilliant shelter but I think they had the idea and if they’d had more time and more bracken, they could have made it better. We had a quick lunch – soup & sandwiches – and then it was time for our outdoor activities. Because of the yellow weather warning, we’d swapped high ropes for archery. That was nice and easy. I’m qualified to teach that so we didn’t need to get an instructor in (or pay for them) and check their qualifications. The girls got two hours to really hone their skills and do a proper tournament. We took all the Guides and Rangers last month and our tournament was only one round long because we just didn’t have the time. I think they won’t want to do a lot of archery for a while.
Next was very quick half-past-threesies while I returned the arrows and keys and then we were out again for rifle shooting. This was a check-the-qualifications thing – the centre said that all instructors have either the national qualification or their in-house one. Girlguiding’s requirements are the national qualification so I had to request that. Fortunately, they seem to be reasonably familiar and shrugged and said they’d already scheduled Ian for it and he has the qualification we need. Good.
I’ve not done a lot of rifle shooting before. Folding the thing back and stuffing the pellet in felt fiddly, although I guess it’s no more fiddly than nocking an arrow and lining up the sights was actually easier than I expected. I don’t say I was an instant champion shooter but when we went to collect our paper targets, I’d hit it with all five shots and decided to take on the challenge of hitting the Polo mint suspended above the target. It took all five of my shots but I did it. It’s a small target but not tiny and not really harder than hitting the inner rings on the paper targets. Well, I suppose it’s quite precise. Look, I’m trying to play down the fact that I hit three Polos in an hour-long session! I also hit the spinning spoon precisely enough to make it spin but somehow that wasn’t as satisfying as blowing up Polos.
Next up was dinner, another Skills Builder. We were going to build a camp oven. That is, disassemble a cardboard box, cover it in foil and place it over a disposable barbecue. The girls made “campfire pizzas” – fill a pitta bread with whatever you want and wrap it in foil. We also had cowboy casserole with optional sausages. You’d normally cook the sausages in the casserole but I had one vegetarian and one girl who doesn’t eat chicken (who knew hotdogs are made of chicken? Also, write that on your dietary requirements form!) so we cooked them separately. For a bit more bulk we had pasta and we finished with bananas filled with chocolate buttons and cooked in the oven. I’ve done campfire pizzas before and been dubious about how long they take but the oven was really efficient. It’s true that I hated buying a disposable barbecue and it felt wrong to pop a cardboard box on top of it but it worked pretty well.
The girls took a while to play cards and chill after dinner while the leaders went out and about to investigate the site while I got my daily 2km in. The other leaders don’t really know the site – one of them came here when we did the archery last month and the other has never been here and it’s only half an hour away and it’s really good! It’s got so many activities, it’s got three buildings for residentials, it’s got a big camping field and honestly, we just walked around congratulating ourselves on having discovered it.
By the time we got back, it was raining so smores were cooked in the kitchen over the hob and the campfire took the form of a lantern with a red pillowcase over it but they seemed to enjoy singing more than I expected and the three who are actually Rangers made their Promises. The fourth is a Young Leader who doesn’t want to become a Ranger, mostly in case it takes her away from Young Leadering but in the spirit of the now defunct Senior Section, she’s invited to our activities. She’s still 14-18, it’s just her role makes it difficult to be a full time Ranger.
And that was Saturday.
On Sunday morning, I had to get one of the girls up and fed early so she could be picked up at 9am for rehearsals and I had to wake the other leaders up at 8.30 with tea and a whisper of “we ate all the bread for sandwiches yesterday and I forgot we were doing eggy bread for breakfast!” so while we gathered everything we needed for breakfast, one of the leaders walked the five minutes down the road to the mini Tesco (thank you for being so small as to open at 7am on Sunday!!) and then we took everything outside and made eggy bread in the BBQ area. The girls had packed up their stuff without even being asked so once the washing-up was done, we went back to the field to do two more UMAs – build a raft to transport a cup of water and make a piece of natural art. The rafts went down well but I can’t say as much for the natural art. I fetched the remains of the smores and we tried using our firepit to make a tiny fire to cook the marshmallows before giving up and returning to the house for lunch – basically, leftovers. They really used their imaginations. A lot of wraps were fried with pizza ingredients and sandwich fillings and we had lots of cake. Crisps were not really eaten and neither was the fruit but that’s what I’d expected them to eat with their lunch and the food came in under budget.
I think then we carried all the camp equipment back to the leaders’ cars and cleaned out the building. Did we finish with another activity? I’ve got an idea we covered three Skills Builders and I can only see two here. We did three. Stage 5 camp. Oh yes, we did Happy Camp Healthy Camp as a chat in the evening. Tent Doctor can wait until next term, as we had very little camp stuff that needed repairing. Anyway, it was getting on for 4pm, end of camp. I handed out badges and we waited for parents. The girls got a second camp name tape for their blankets, a region I’ve Been to Ranger Camp badge and the leaders got a region Thank You badge. I planned to give out Skills Builder badges but on the Thursday, 24 hours in advance, I discovered that we had to do Stage 5 and not the Stage 6 I’d been planning. See, Girlguiding relented on the amount of time the programme takes and declared that you only have to do four of the five activity cards to complete a Skills Builder – except Stage 6, which is supposed to be a proper challenge. One of the five cards for Camp Stage 6 is to camp out for at least 15 nights while you’re in the 14-18 section. No way are most of my girls going to complete that. So we had to switch down to Stage 5 at the last minute and I didn’t have the badges, even if we’d done Tent Doctor.
Honestly, after the stress of planning it, I expected to spend the weekend in a state of stress. “Oh, it’s going terribly”, “oh, they’re hating it”, “oh, this is the worst ever!” and actually it was really nice. Everyone was very chilled, the girls were very easy to live with, especially the two oldest who are inveterate people pleasers (I had to tell one of them that no, I really can carry this box, you’re here to have fun, not to do all the work), we had fun, we achieved more programme stuff than I’d imagined and I think we all went away happy.
I guess that means next year I have to do it all over again but properly and starting much earlier, and possibly including the Guides. It’s easy enough. To get your Going Away With licence, you just organise and carry out a camp literally by the book. I have the book. Just do what it says. But the leader from the boathouse had some great advice. She did hers last year and she said her mentor said it doesn’t have to be quite that “by the book”. As long as it’s safe and the girls have fun, that’s what’s important. She also suggested instead of taking water carriers that are a pain to sterilise and too heavy to carry, just get a 5l bottle or two of water from the supermarket and when you’ve finished drinking it, use it as your water container for the camp. Chuck it in recycling when you leave and you’ve got a perfectly clean water source with no worrying about chemicals or bad tastes. Those two are the best pieces of advice I had for the entire camp, honestly.
And I do fancy getting the shiny badge next year…