Sunday 20 August 2017

Parc Le Breos Day 3

We must have tired the Scouts out. Despite all the excitement of sleeping out in their own bivouacs they were soon off to sleep last night and stayed in bed until just before the planned getting up time.

With breakfast sorted and kit packed, the Scouts were off on today's activity, a hike along the coast path to Port Eynon.

The plan was that they would hike while the leaders did a few jobs around the site and went shopping to top up on perishables before meeting them at Port Eynon with the minibus to bring them back after some time on the beach. However, even though the navigation seemed simple enough - " keep the sea on your left til you find the minibus" - they managed to make in into an epic 7 hour trek. Apparently the need for all 9 Scouts to stroke every single dog they met may have had something to do with the delay, along with the unplanned stop at the chip shop in Oxwich.
The end result was that the leaders spent 4 hours sitting in Port Eynon waiting for the Scouts to arrive. There's only so many cups of tea you can drink so we all ended up having an afternoon snooze in the minibus, after partaking in what is becoming a camp tradition. The leader team has managed to find a Cream Tea on every UK summer camp for the last 4 years!

Since the time and tide had caught up with us, there was no beach to play on by the time the Scouts arrived so, after an Ice Cream we headed back to camp.

Our Patrol Leaders put a great deal of thought into the menu and were not going to let the small matter of torrential rain stop tonight's dessert being cooked on the fire so it was all hands to fetching wood. We did cheat a bit. Due to the late start and some rain enforced delays getting the fire going, dinner was cooked on gas but dessert - chocolate orange cakes cooked inside the oranges - went on the fire as planned.

While the cooking was happening,  we did a quick check on the bivvys. We'd placed 2 sheets of newspaper in each before we went out to see how much rain water the collected. Surprisingly, one of the bivvys was still dry. Probably even dry enough to sleep in although there were no volunteers willing to test this.

Bed time came with a minor disaster. A tent door had been left open and one sleeping bag was now far to wet to sleep in. After some tent reshuffling and the loan of a spare sleeping bag all is well and the Scouts are asleep, getting plenty of rest ready for tomorrow's adventure in the Brecon Beacons.

As for me, I'm enjoying the sounds of a forest on a rainy night writing this from my hammock in the trees.

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