I went to Wellies & Wristbands last weekend. It’s Girlguiding’s huge annual festival camp and I’d been looking forward to it for weeks. It was a bit of a washout. (I didn’t take many pictures. I did a few videos and put them on Instagram Stories and they’re now saved as a highlight on my… More Wellies & Washout 2018
Girlguiding has four annual flagship events. There’s the Big Gig, a huge pop concert at Wembley Arena (in previous years they’ve taken it to Manchester or Birmingham and so on but last few years, it’s settled at Wembley). There’s Wellies & Wristbands, a huge music festival/national camp in August at three venues simultaneously, Magic &… More Sparkle & Ice 2018: A volunteer’s perspective on a large-scale Adventure weekend
It’s been a really busy few weeks and all my posts are in the wrong order because I haven’t had time to write them! But now things are quieter (Ranger finances tidied up, book published, home for a few weeks etc), I have time to blog again. Today I’m going to have a think about… More The best campsites in Iceland
There we are in the blistering heat, a marquee up behind us. It’s taken us three or four attempts to figure out what shape the frame should be but it’s up. There’s me, most experienced camper of the lot and severely emetophobic First Aider. There’s Pixie, inexperienced camper doing her assessed camp for her camp… More Alice in Wonderland camp
You pick up a lot of skills as a Guide leader. Team work, leadership skills, First Aid, various outdoors abilities, admin, improvisation, children skills, public singing – and event planning. I was involved in my biggest event yet last weekend. I’ve planned multiple district events for 50-100 people, some of them all on my own… More Behind the scenes at a national Brownie event
Friday night was not optimal tent-pitching weather but there we were – me, three Rangers and four Guides, up to our ankles in mud, in pouring rain, putting up our tents in the dark. We’d arrived at 6pm at Girlguiding’s latest event, Sparkle & Ice, a winter survival camp happening simultaneously at three Training &… More Sparkle & Ice 2017: it turns out winter camp is cold
I wrote this post three weeks ago. As you read this, I’m having my mentor visit in order to sign off the very last clause of my Adult Leadership Qualification with Guides. Three ALQs! Judging by my past record, I’ll be doing Rainbows by September. And so to the subject of today: my camp blanket… More Meet my camp blanket
The new tent is here! It came astonishingly quickly – less than forty-eight hours between ordering online to it popping through the door. New kit is always exciting, even if it’s only a cheap tent. I have a one-man tent I take to Iceland every summer which has to be small enough to fit in… More The new tent
This is my tent. It’s a Eurohike 225 TS which my grandad gave me for my fifteenth or sixteenth birthday, which makes it fourteen or fifteen years old. It’s in more or less perfect condition and up until a year ago, even the pegs were perfect. Last year, my idiot Rangers managed to mix their… More The quest for a new tent
I got home from Edinburgh, having travelled by overnight train, at 10am last Friday. Before 2pm, I was out again, on my way to Wellies & Wristbands 2015. This was by far the biggest event I’ve ever been to – probably the biggest event anyone in my district has been to. I heard there were… More Our weekend at Wellies & Wristbands 2015