10th August 2024 - Red Rose 2024 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I have now returned from the Red Rose Jamboree. I am a broken, tired and sore man but I have had a great time. There was no desire to continue writing at the end of each day. A mix of the phone keyboard and tiredness made that a pain. Day 4 - Aqua day Aqua day was simply a day spent on the water. My lot were doing a mix of activities such as sea kayaking, narrowboating, raft building, snorkelling and 'splash'. I got roped into going with the ones on 'splash' and found it was just a load of water activities on Windermere, a lake. There were kayaks, paddle boards, yachts and other small craft to mess around on the water in. I should have had fun but instead I got the joy of sitting in a field. Good job I brought a chair! Well, I ended up snoozing all afternoon. Weather was glorious at least. I ended up having to discourage the singing of '9 german bombers', an English football chant. Turns out some Scouts had taught my Explorers the chant. My main frustration was being made the bus monitor and having to work out who needed labelling as requiring special attention due to medical conditions. It is hard to get 70 kids to listen for their name and respond in a manner in which you can notice them. There was a quick turn around with the Explorers when we got back as they had to leave to go on Udder Chaos. Udder Chaos was an incident hike through the night. It was about 12km and the Explorers had to find a series of bases and complete activities for points. So many seemed to not complete it. I was rather chuffed that mine all managed to complete the hike without any navigation blunders. I should hope they did alright considering most had recently completed their Duke of Edinburgh Silver expeditions. They all crept back at 1am. Day 5 - Golden Day Golden day was a celebration of Red Rose's 50th year of being a Jamboree. The morning was spent with a series of activities for the young people. Each sub-camp ran 18 or so activities where the young people could earn Moo Bucks. What the Moo Bucks were for, I have no idea still. However, those kids wanted them. I ran a stall about morse code where the group split into 2. One team sent a coordinate while the other sent back the name of the image at that coordinate. All comms were to be in morse code. This worked reasonably well and I had some surprisingly keen people taking part. The rest of the day involved a picnic and some futher activities. Sadly the rain hammered hard and turned the site into a mud bath. Toilets started overflowing. Not good! At least the showers were warm after the second day and so clearing the mud from legs was pleasant. I did spot someone I knew. It was a leader who took me away to the 20th World Scout Jamboree in Thailand back in 2002/3 as well as to Switzerland for a week in Adelboden in 2004. I had not seen this leader since 2004 so it was rather a surprise. Even more surprising was that he remembered me. The young people had some mega lie ins. Many did not surface until gone midday. Most were tired from Udder Chaos and the early mornings. Can't say I blame them. I was just jealous of their lying in. Day 6 - Platinum Day Platinum day was spent at Waddicar, a Scout campsite in Lancashire. I had a fun job. I was to protect the fairground organ from mischievious Scouts. Alas, someone decided this was not an issue and so I ended up helping a friend with bubbles. Weather was again wet. Surprisingly, no one wants to play with bubbles in the rain. Another morning of sitting around. The afternoon involved wondering around and seeing what the young people could get up to. They could do axe throwing, archery, crossbows, air rifles, kayaking, water slide, zorbing, mini caving route, bouldering and lots more which I cannot remember. It is a nice site. A good mix of activities and great camping spots. The weather was annoying but what can you do? Toilets continued to become dire. Leader toilets were leaking and/or blocked. Kids seemed to desire destroying their own toilets for some reason. We started playing a game - mud or poo? You simply looked at the walls of the toilet or the splashes on people's legs and had a debate. We also got the news that we needed to discuss something of great importance with our young people - that pooing in the shower is not acceptable. Turns out someone/some group of people had been regularly pooing in the changing part of the showers. Multiple showers affected each day. Disgusting bunch of reprobates! I ended up in the adult hub with a friend to beat the grim rain blues. We had a couple of drinks while the other 2 leaders remained sober. It was a wonderful evening of laughing at the grim weather, grim toilets, grim shower poos and our grim singing along to the music. One of those evenings where your sides hurt almost as much as your mouth from all the laughing. Day 7 - Adrenaline Day Our final activity day. Again, the young people were split into seperate activities. My lot did mountain biking, an adrenaline activity day at Honistor, mountain walking and scrambling up Conistor, geo-caching, winter sports and segway riding. Well guess which one lead to injuries... SEGWAY RIDING! Turns out that muppets who steer into tree roots will fall and hurt their thumb. Thankfully, the Explorer who fell showed that their thumb was fine by swiping through their stories or whatever nonsense they were watching in a zombie state. We did say that any injuries would come from the segways. The evening was spent closing out the camp and partying. We got ourselves dolled up in UV paint. I had swirls painted in different colours around my face. My beard was plated into 2 mini pig tails and the ends painted with UV paint. Once again, the weird communal feelings were present as we pranced our way along to the stage. There were 2 freak outs. One was during the closing ceremony from one Scout who I did not expect to suffer. She was heading towards a panic attack and so we got her out of the crowd. The other was at the end of the night in the sub-camp disco. This was a large marquee with loud music, lights galore and dodgy leader dancing. Turns out that this was rather triggering for one Scout and they had a bit of a melt down. We soon got him out of there and ended up having to get him calm through getting him to tell us his usual routine. This is an effective technique second only to the 'distract through getting them to help' technique for swift calming down. If you are aware of any other techniques to help people who are overwhelmed then please let me know. I am always looking for ideas and have a rather neuro divergant Scout troop and Explorer unit. We welcome anyone but the training is non-existant for helping people get the best for them. We had a bit of bother getting everyone back for bed. Our 3 night time ramblers ended up being the issue. Thankfully, their learning of the '9 german bombers' chant and sharing it with anyone they met was useful. We heard the chant from a far and so knew where to start looking. Our curfew policy was simple... If the music stops, come back. They should have come back but instead had joined a large cluster of gormless, hormone ridden hoarde of Explorers atop a hill. We found them surprisingly quickly considering. Their excuse was that someone had told them that there were no curfews that night. HAH! Daft sods. Toilets were truely in a state. Straw was put down to help with the quagmire people had to pass through to get to the toilets. Unfortunately, this just reduced the level of squelch to most of the boot as opposed to all of the boot. It also provided some horrible monsters with something to shove down the toilet and to poo on. What is it with these monsters? Why destroy your own facilities? [Insert many angry curse words of varying strength]. At least the weather was mostly fine. Odd shower but some sun. Day 8 - Going Home Day It was a struggle to get the Explorers up. I was packed away with tent down before any left their tent. I woke up at the same time as they were meant to. Ah well. We had a hard morning packing up but got everything back in with ease. Unfortunately, the fates decided to be mean and it had rained at 4 am. As such, the tents were wet. Then any hope of slightly drying the tents were dashed by 15 minutes of heavy rain which soaked everything. Sigh. The journey home was a struggle. Plenty of traffic and that minibus was hot. Throw in teenagers who last showered on day 5 after much protest and you have a smelly time. One removed their shoes and almost caused a crash from the gagging. We left at 1030 and arrived in Birmingham at 1530. Not bad. The jamboree was a great event even if the weather was pants. It was my fifth jamboree after 2002/2003 WSJ in Thailand, 2007 WSJ in UK, 2008 Smuggler in Cornwall and 2010 Kilke in Finland. Why yes, I started working full time in 2011. How ever could you have guessed? I think all 14 of the Scouts and Explorers I took had a good time. They certainly grew as people over the 8 days. It always surprises me how much you notice people changing while spending so much time with them. The being forced to go on activities without knowing anyone else was a big hurdle for these young people but they managed. I had been put off trying to go on a jamboree with my current group as the cost is prohibitive. The camp fees were Â275 for young people and that did not include food or transport. We ended up charging Â400 but managed to get it so the most any parent paid was Â190. There were some lucky grant applications along with helping with santa runs and bag packs which helped reduce the cost. My group is in a really deprived part of Birmingham so this was a great achievement. I have started looking out for jamborees in 2026. Next year is the explorer belt in Spain and Gibraltar. The current list is Poacher in Lincolnshire. Then there is a World Scout Jamboree to help as part of the Jamboree Planning Team in 2027. Well, I helped with the European Scout Jamboree 2020 JPT and it was a good laugh so why not help the same team with a bigger event?