I’ve been a Girlguiding leader since 2007 and I was a Young Leader and a Guide, Brownie and Rainbow before that. I’ve been involved since I was five years old and now I’m a qualified Brownie, Guide & Ranger leader, a county leadership mentor, an archery instructor, fencing coach, paddlesport assistant, member of the Trefoil Guild and in March 2024, I’m starting as Division Commissioner so I have a lot of hats!
There’s a lot of great stuff about being a Girlguiding volunteer – community, teamwork, inspiring the girls and so on – but my favourite bit is that I get to have adventures and I get to introduce these kids to their first taste of adventure. I know my Rangers will still be talking about that time they went to winter camp when they’re my age. Some of the girls who visit the boathouse will go on to have a lifelong love of paddling. Maybe some of them will join an archery or fencing club on the strength of my taster session. And I’ve been on the receiving end of that. I take a tent and camp around Iceland and I know I wouldn’t do that if I hadn’t learned to camp when I was a Guide. Would I be on this kayaking leadership journey if we hadn’t done that one pool session when I was a Guide? How many adventures can I tick off as things I first tried because of Guides?
I post a fair bit about Girlguiding, mostly about the adventures and the camps because those are the bits that are relevant here to a travel/outdoors/adventure blog but to give you a few highlights from Girlguiding themselves: we help all girls know they can do anything. We open up a world of possibilities to girls from 4 to 18 – one where they can do anything. Rainbows welcomes all girls from 4 to 7 years old for play, learning and tons of fun in a colourful, safe space. Brownies welcomes all girls from 7 to 10 years old for nonstop fun, learning and adventure. Guides is a relaxed, welcoming space where you can have fun, learn and be yourself with good friends from 10 to 14 years old, and Rangers is your space – where you get together with other girls from 14 to 18 to have fun, learn more, give back, hang out, and just be you. We’re over 300,000 girls from 4 to 18 who come together to laugh, learn, explore and have adventures. We’re over 70,000 volunteers who make guiding happen by giving our time, talents, enthusiasm and
care for girls.
This last year has been like nothing I’ve experienced ever. I’m up to about five Girlguiding roles and this summer term, I’ve been out four nights a week plus the weekend quite a few times. So I thought, as possibly the busiest volunteer in the country, I’d talk a bit about each of those roles over… More Girlguiding 2023-24: a review
Just for the avoidance of doubt, I’m not actually a kayaking instructor. I volunteer at our Girlguiding boathouse where we have one qualified leader and three assistants. I’m kind of hoping to be an actual qualified instructor by next year maybe but for now, I’m using “instructor” in the sense of… well, my job is to go out… More My second season as a kayaking instructor
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!
Welcome to part two of my Dartmoor weekend! Today we’re off on a different route, in the hope of getting another logbook walk. But today we’re setting off in two groups rather than splitting up. In theory, that’s because there are now eight of us and that’s a tiny bit big for a walking group.… More A shorter walk up tors and across downs
Last weekend I went to Dartmoor and this is the first of two posts on the walks I did. It was a joint Girlguiding Region walking weekend, the aim of which is to run a level 2 walking training but there’s room at the centre for a few extra so it’s open to leisure walkers… More A tor-bagging walk around Haytor
That’s a total clickbait title – for the first time, I deliberately didn’t book a qualification at Try Inspire Qualify because there were none I wanted to do that I haven’t already done. Try Inspire Qualify has a lot in common with Camp Wildfire, actually: a lot of adults taking the weekend off being responsible… More I didn’t qualify at Try Inspire Qualify!
Welcome back to the last of this long-overdue miniseries on my county trip to Switzerland in the summer of 2014! Today is our last real day. We’ve still got a two-day drive home, which I won’t tell you about because it’s boring (in summary: we sat in a minibus for two days. One old lady… More Switzerland 2014: St Beatus Caves, a boat trip and a rainstorm