OK, when I say “camp”, I mean what my previous Guides called “indoor camp” and current Brownies calls “a sleepover”: a Brownie residential of one night at a Scout-owned campsite in indoor accommodation with bunk beds. “Brownie camp” is more succinct though. It’s 9.30pm on Sunday night, we sent our little angels home eight and … More 11 things I learned on Brownie camp
On Saturday morning, we’re taking twelve of our Brownies away for a sleepover – a mini-camp, indoors and just one night. On Monday, if I’m not too exhausted, I’ll tell you all about how it went but today let’s talk about how it was planned. First up was Tawny Owl, our licence holder, deciding it … More How to plan a Brownie sleepover
There are some camps that go down in legend, to be talked over ten or twenty years later. The one with the storm that knocked the Ranger tent over so that they were scared to go and alert the leaders and everyone ended up getting sent home for two days so we could clean up … More Back to Basics Guide camp was definitely type 2 fun
Being both a keen Guide and a keener traveller, you’d think I’d be an INTOPS regular- that is, Girlguiding’s shorthand for International Opportunities, or trips abroad. But no, I’ve only in the last two years really come across INTOPS and I’d never thought about going for it myself. But now I have and this intersection … More What happens at INTOPS (International Opportunities) adult selection?
The second part of the Switzerland 2014 post to get rewritten, because the photos had broken, is our day trip to Our Chalet. Quick recap: this is a Girlguiding trip; it’s a county adults trip with no selection process other than being the first twelve or so to send a deposit and we went to … More Switzerland 2014: Our Chalet
For reasons that might become clearer later in the month, I was looking at my old Switzerland posts the other day and discovered that all the photos had broken in the first two posts from our county trip in 2014. So rather than just repair the photos, I thought I’d rewrite them altogether because it’s … More Switzerland 2014: Anita’s B&B
It’s been a while since I did a Girlguiding post (last November when we went to Sparkle & Ice, in fact!) so it’s definitely time to do another. Last weekend, I went to GLOW! GLOW is Girlguiding South West’s new flagship event for girls. With the selling-off of our Training & Activity Centres, our big … More Campfire singing for 8 hours at GLOW
I love Sparkle & Ice. I haven’t missed a single year, not even 2021, when it was cancelled because of some killer mutant virus. I took a mix of Guides & Rangers in 2017, just Rangers in 2019 and 2020, volunteered in 2018 and 2022 and I’m taking my new Rangers this year. However, this … More Sparkle & Ice 2023: the biggest one
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 … More Organising a Ranger camp
Sparkle & Ice is my favourite of Girlguiding’s large-scale events. That’s partly because I’m a polar bear and I like things that are meant to be cold and/or wintery and partly because I like the weirdness of it. We don’t generally camp in the winter, because we’re not tough enough and the girls certainly aren’t … More Sparkle & Ice 2022: the warmest Sparkle ever!
I Am A Polar Bear 