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.
I don’t talk enough about my outdoors adventures here – actually, the truth is I don’t have enough outdoors adventures. In 2019 I’m going to have more of them, I promise. You may or may not know that I have an archery qualification and more recently, a fencing qualification and recently the opportunity came up… More “It’s an emergency. We need some salads carrying”
Last week I told you about becoming a British Fencing Core Coach but at the same event, Try Inspire Qualify, I also – much to my own surprise – became a tennis coach with She Rallies. This is Sunday. So, with the fencing qualification done on Saturday, we still had another day. Part of this… More I’m a tennis coach!
I spent last weekend at a training event and the upshot of it is – I’m now a qualified fencing coach! It’s the most exciting thing to happen to me since I attended the same event two years ago and became an archery instructor. I can now reach teenagers two weapons and I have the… More I’m a fencing coach!
I spent last weekend at Girlguiding’s flagship annual event, the massive festival-themed camp Wellies & Wristbands. I’ve done quite a lot of camping and quite a lot of Guide camping but Pixie, my other leader…. is not very experienced. So here are ten things you should know before taking your Guides to camp: 1 Guide… More 10 Things You Should Know Before Taking Guides to Camp
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
This is a travel & outdoors adventures blog… but I don’t seem to do a lot of outdoors adventures recently. However, in January I spent a day volunteering with the National Trust, specifically with the volunteer rangers on Brownsea Island. Now, Brownsea Island is a bit special. It’s local but it’s also where Scouting and… More Juliet Tries… extreme gardening with the National Trust
A little under a year and a half ago, I became a qualified archery instructor. It’s still the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me and the qualification I’m most proud of. I did it through Girlguiding, who ran an adults-only camp at Foxlease, their Training and Activity Centre in the New Forest.… More I’m a qualified archery instructor!
You may know I’m a Guide & Ranger leader. You may not know I’m a member of the Trefoil Guild. That’s “Guiding for Adults”, although I usually describe it as “Brownies for grown-ups”. The Trefoil have meetings, do what they like and have no unit leader responsibilities. All the fun, none of the hassle. However,… More I finished my Bronze Voyage Award!
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