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!
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
Something very exciting happened two weeks ago. My Bronze DofE badge and certificate arrived in the post! For anyone who hasn’t encountered DofE, it’s the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, done in three levels (Bronze, Silver & Gold) and stereotypically involves two to five days of walking in the rain over inhospitable territory like Dartmoor. The… More DofE – as an adult!
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
At eight o’clock in the morning, having packed up my tent and hauled it across the campsite, I was on a bus. By one o’clock, with an hour’s detour to walk up a canyon formed in Iceland’s most productive eruption in history, I was at Landmannalaugar, an oasis and campsite in the Highlands. The plan… More Landmannalaugar circular walk
I’m not a horse rider. I know which end bites and which end kicks and that’s about the limit of my horse knowledge. But horse riding is one of the most popular activities you can in Iceland, so I thought I’d give it a go. And having given it a go, I gave it three… More Riding an Icelandic horse
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