In part 1, I told you what the Rebel Badge Club is and what Rebel Summer Camp is all about so if you don’t know, you can go and read that. In the meantime, I’m jumping straight into part 2, Sunday and Monday.
Greta 2’s first scheduled activity at 9.30am was board games. I’m not a big board games fan so I’d earmarked this session for a swim but the pool was in use all day so I wandered down to the board game cafe just after 9.30. Rebels aren’t necessarily great at getting up early, especially after a night of karaoke but board games is a chilled way to start the day and about half of us who were there mostly sort of sat there a bit zombie-eyed.
We were awake for session 2 though – we were doing some lifesaving, which meant getting over to the pool and jumping in. There had been a brief power cut the night before which had knocked the heating system out and although they’d turned it back on the in the morning, it had had several hours to lose heat and was even more uncomfortably cold on first dip than yesterday. We were doing lifesaving with Mercury 2 and we started with a couple of lengths of the pool to warm us up and check that we could all actually swim. Since this campsite is mostly used for school and Scout/Guide type activities, the pool is very shallow so anyone getting into most kinds of trouble could just stand up. We started with various reach and throw rescues – the torpedo float, which is the red one lifeguards often wear tied around their body, the poles and then we got out the throw bags and tried them. All good – we could all sit or lie on the side and rescue our partners. Then we had a go at treading water for thirty seconds or maybe even a minute while fully dressed, which is the one criteria for the Survivor badge I was waiting to cross off. As it turns out, it’s very difficult to tread water in a pool shallow enough to stand up in and I found myself thinking many times during that minute, “Float To Live would be so much more practical”. Or just… standing up. Anyway, we did it. Then we learned various ways to tow a casualty and tried them out on each other, including some very enthusiastic kicking and thrashing casualties. We had time for a couple of lengths after that, or for me to produce my GoPro because I wanted a picture of me in the water holding up my Survivor badge. That turned into pictures of various members of Greta 2 showing off their towing techniques. Handy thing, a GoPro.
We had time to get dressed and then ran down to High All Aboard, which according to the website means that we all climb a pole and stand at the top holding hands. I had no intention of doing this but Patrol Leader George had pointed out that Patrol members who wanted to climb needed someone to belay them. Ok, fair point. I’ll come and be sociable and belay. We had nice instructor Owen who did pretty much the same as Ellie yesterday, though. We didn’t have enough people for more than two of us to climb up at once so we’d mostly be going on our own unless we really wanted to do it as a pair and we could climb as high or as low as we wanted. Well, fine. If you’re going to put it like that. I can climb the pole, I just can’t stand on it or throw myself off it.
Actually, I couldn’t climb the pole. Up until about five feet, it has aluminium rods slotted into it which are removed when an instructor isn’t around, eg overnight, so no one can break in, climb the pole unsupervised, fall off and break their back. These rods, by their very nature, move around, but at least they’re big enough to grab. The wooden handholds screwed into the pole aren’t. I could just about stand on them – could stand better if I’d thought to bring my climbing shoes but I felt like I couldn’t get hold of them with my hands. But that was fine. Greta 2 were encouraging, Owen was nice and I came back down, having got about five feet further off the ground than I’d intended to when I came down here. Three of our Patrol did get to the top – Laura did it twice and was joined by Madi and… was it Libby? Owen had some games – hold hands and lean back. Hold hands, lean back, then clap your hands and grab each other again. And then shove each other until one of you falls off.
A quick stop for lunch and we were off to Nerf Wars, run by Charlotte who I’ve previously met at Reading meet ups and also at a Hampshire Rebellion event. I liked Nerf Wars – foam bullets shot from plastic guns with tables for cover and inflatable bins or robots for bases. Basically, we split into two teams and shot at each other and because this was August, Yusuf Dikeç, the silver Olympic shooter, was fresh in my mind and I wanted to shoot like him. Even better, I wanted a picture of me shooting like him! Half our Patrol went off halfway through to join in laser tag, since they were very low on numbers but I stayed, gathered every bullet I could get and practised my aim on one of the inflatables.
The last activity of the day was abseiling. Having not entirely covered myself in glory on the high ropes activities, here was one where I could shine. I was first up that tower – maybe second – and explained very calmly to the instructor that I could do it just fine but I hate the bit where I have to step over the edge, and that I’m going to hold on to the edge with my right hand even if it’s inconvenient for arranging the ropes and even though I know I won’t actually be able to hold on it I slip. And then I added “and once I start moving, that Italian hitch on the support rope will turn over and I’ll fall an inch and it’ll scare me even though I know it’s going to happen” and the instructor went “Well, I know you must have done this a few times if you recognise that as an Italian hitch”. Italian hitches are what cavers use for belaying, although we call it lifelining. Belay plates and Grigris (an assisted braking device used generally on high ropes activities) are unknown in caving. You use your rope and you use a large carabiner. You don’t take things that can get clogged with mud. So yes, I know an Italian hitch when I see it. And actually, although I know it turned over because that’s how that knot works, I didn’t feel it and I descended very triumphantly. Four times, I think. I like abseiling. Give or take that moment when I put my feet over the edge, I like abseiling and it doesn’t frighten me. On my second turn I bunny-hopped down, on my third I hopped down on one leg and I was persuaded to go up a fourth time to hop down on the other leg. Abseiling: triumph.
We only had an hour’s break before it was time for either the Spoonies meet-up or the Rainbow Rebels meet-up. I’m not the former and I don’t really identify with the latter so I had two hours before going to join the Rebel Readers. We’d discussed beforehand whether there was going to be a book for camp and decided we’d just talk about what we’d read most recently. Unfortunately, once we were all squished into the Group Room, there were about 40 of us and we only had 45 minutes, which just about gave time for each person to say “this is what I’m reading, I like it because x, y and z”. But a few of the people at the start of it dominated the conversation and we were less than a third of the way round before most of us ran off for the murder mystery evening. I’d been looking forward to this. A few Rebels had volunteered to play the parts and we were ready to solve the mystery.
But the mystery was too mysterious. There was an introduction and then suddenly we were supposed to get up and go and chat with the actors to find out whodunnit. Whodunwhat? There had been no crime. There were no clues. How could there be clues? There was also music on, Rebels who seemed to understand it mingling with the actors and running backwards and forwards with information and I sat there with Amanda from Greta 2 and Louise from Nelson 2 and we decided we were going to go to the board game room to wait it all out. We found the last of the Rebel Readers still in there, so I chatted books a bit while the others set up a game about butterflies. Then Charlotte came marching in to announce that there had been a medical emergency in the murder mystery (and none of us had the presence of mind to ask if it had been an actual murder!) and the room had been evacuated. We later discovered that it had merely moved outside to the paddock and otherwise continued but whatever happened, and I never quite got to the bottom of it, an ambulance turned up, because we saw its lights flashing outside the Group Room.
By 9.15 it was all over and we went back to the sports hall for the pub quiz. This went on until 11.30, which is a bit late for me in my old age. We had a pretty good group on our table, we got almost all the world monuments (“Where’s Charly?”). we did pretty well on the Charly/Charlie/Charles-themed music round and I wish I’d been a bit more certain on Georgia as being the county known as the Land of the Golden Fleece. I remembered hearing the story while I was in Tbilisi but Georgia is an obscure country, it has to be Greece or Turkey. And it was Georgia. Of course it was. I’m not entirely sure how many teams were playing but I think we came seventh, which, frankly, wasn’t enough. Maybe we weren’t first place material but I think we did better than seventh!
And then it was bedtime – find the tent in the dark, you’re too cold and tired to read a book, ok, read the book.
On Monday I was up earlier than I planned and managed to take three loads of luggage back to the car before our first activity at 9.30am. It had taken five and a half journeys to bring it all across on Friday so I was reasonably pleased that I was a bit ahead. Our first activity was crate stack and for various reasons, I decided at the very last minute to skip it and go for another swim. I’m not a huge crate stack fan, we do it quite regularly with Rangers and the pool looked more appealing. Did we at least have enough left in the group to do crate stack without me as a belayer? Or did I do it because hardly anyone was turning up? At this point, I can’t remember. But I had a nice swim. Knowing it was a 21m pool, I could do the maths better, so I did 60 lengths, which is 1.26km. Not as much as I’d do in an hour, or even an hour and a quarter, on a normal day but it was first thing on a Monday morning and I’d just scurried about three-quarters of a mile hauling camping kit.
Next up was dodgeball, with Mercury 2. We had a very small Patrol for this – we were only 10 in the first place, 1 person couldn’t make it which made us 9 at best, and I think only four of us came to dodgeball. I will say, we held out own surprisingly well against the surprisingly competitive and aggressive Mercury 2. At one point, what with getting players out and back in, we were down to one on one and although we ultimately lost, we gave them a good fight and it was a much closer battle than eleven on four should have been.
Our last activity before lunch was go karting. We got in a bit of a mess here because we decided to just turn up at the track, which was right opposite our tents, but the instructor was waiting for us at the paddock. But we all got together eventually. The go-karts are little pedal-powered things and there were six of them but seven of us, so we went in threes and fours. I struggled a bit to get mine going – the start is up a hill that’s barely perceptible to the eye but when you’re pedalling a go-kart up it, you really feel it. The boys rushed off ahead and Maddi pedalled serenely along behind. But somewhere around the second, or maybe third, lap I realised I was catching up. In the middle of the figure-8 track, I managed to squeeze through between the boys and sprint to a win. Well, that had neither been the plan nor the expectation when I set off. I got competitive after that. I needed to win! I needed that speed! It was all harder work that we’d expected – probably the hardest work of any activity we’d done so far – and we finished early and crossed the path back to our tents for lunch. I took another couple of cartload of stuff back to the car at lunchtime and by the time I was heading for the paddock for indoor climbing, all I really had left was the tent itself.
Indoor climbing was in a small room next to the sports hall and we had “an interloper”, Hazel from Greta 1 who’d switched activities. Because a lot of people leave early on Monday, there are gaps in activities and arrangements can be made to swap them around. I’d had a quick look at the board to see if there was any caving on Monday and if so, what I might swap to get onto it, but it wasn’t on, only on Sunday. With Hazel, that made 6 of us. I’ve just sat and drawn a schedule and I think the most people we ever got all together for an activity was seven, for lifesaving, abseiling and go-karting and I think we averaged 5.1 people per activity across the weekend. Two of them had major tent trouble on Saturday, the pool called a few of us, yoga a few more and a couple of us swapped activities on Monday. Climbing went ok. Laura was the star, as always, but I did ok. I tried out three walls, got to the top of one of them and I don’t think I totally disgraced myself on the other two. I did discover at that point, however, that some members of my Patrol had no idea how to belay, so maybe that needs to be addressed before any harness activity on the next camp.
Our last activity was nightline and rockets. Nightline is a blindfolded obstacle course, where we were joined by Katy and Will from Greta 1. Katy is blind and Will is, I think, partially sighted and their plan was to annihilate the rest of us who are used to being dependent on our eyes. You follow a rope through the woods, which leads you to trees, through tyres, under nets, through tunnels etc. Katy and Will flew on ahead and the rest of us struggled a bit but tried to help each other along with warnings about what was coming up. However, on the way to rockets, I did hear Katy say that she found it harder than she was expecting because she couldn’t use her cane. Rockets was bottle rockets – they had a range set up on the bottom field, they had a load of bottles and they had special caps for them with fins and a valve for inserting a hand pump. You fill your bottle with water, put on the cap and screw the pump into it, lie it on the launch ramp and then pump until it flies free. I quite enjoyed that – never did figure out the optimum combination of water and pumping speed, whereas Will was miles ahead of the rest of us. Anyway, that was good fun.
Then I rushed back to take down my tent and throw the last few bits in my car and rush back for the camp closing ceremony which featured two camp awards – I can’t remember what the first was called but I think it was Charly’s pick for the best Rebel of camp and the second was Rebel’s Rebel, which was the entire camp’s vote for the best person and that was won by Katy. Patrol flags were presented, future camp was discussed and then we all went to pack up our last bits and go home.
I have to say, after it taking nearly five hours to get here, it only took a little over two hours to get home again. I upset the satnav by taking the wrong turning somewhere, hoping to avoid the M5 and then realising I was barrelling towards it after seeing about fifty signs pointing to it but it all went very smoothly. My car, which had screamed on the way up, was perfectly calm on the way down (yes, it was the car; not me. The local garage diagnosed it on Tuesday as “having picked up a stone”) and I was home probably not long after 8pm, which was very respectable.
Am I going next year? Well, there are two issues. First is that it’s a little further north which is a little intimidating as a drive. Second is that I have A Birthday next summer and I’m starting to form plans to spend some time in New Zealand, in which case I’ll be away over camp. But if those don’t happen, or if NZ’s winter isn’t the best time to do it, then I’ll definitely look at going to Rebel Summer Camp 2025. I’m open to it. But we’ll see.