2008 Group Camp

Every year the Falkenberg Scout Group goes to Tranabo over the Ascension Day weekend. The Scouts, Explorer and Network scouts arrive already on Wedensday evening, as the Thursday is a national holiday. On Thursday morning the Juniors (10-12) arrive and then on Friday morning the Cubs (the Miniors) finally descend on the Tranabo forest. When the Cubs invade you know it! The theme of this years camp was water, but the Thursday's rain had dried fairly well before the Cubs were dropped of by their parents and left in the care of two sea monsters, one crazy fisherman, a diver and the little mermaid.

Well installed in the old military tents, the cubs commenced cooking their lunch on Trangias, with the help of the leaders, helpers and parent-helpers. We were lucky to have two dads joining us on this camp too, a new one and one that we apperantly didn't manage to scare off on the last sleepover. They were great!

On the lunch menu was a pasta dish with a ham sauce, raw carrots and cucumber. All the sixes were happily chopping away, and soon enough chomping away at the results. The Cubs were happy to share their food with the leaders and helpers, and believe you me when I say that they'd done a beautiful job of preparing the food. It was absolutely lovely, and the pride in the children's faces when we praised their cooking skills!

We had our friend Tom from Oxford with us. We accually have three Cubs whose mother tongue is English, but being inquisitive and curious the others weren't stopped by any language barriers either, and Tom was a very popular leader at camp.

After lunch an adventure trail was laid out for all at camp to enjoy। The sixes were mixed with older scouts and among other things the cubs and scouts got to try Ph-measuring, building a pressure driven PET-bottle rocket, panning for gold, target shooting with water guns, getting an egg to float, and shooting off waterfilled baloons with a catapult made out of bamboo sticks. The local paper came and did a piece on the camp.

When the trail was finished it was time to start cooking again! This time the Cubs cooked us a Sausage Stroganof with rice, served with tomatoes and cucumber. Again it was delicious!

In the evening there was a camp fire, where classical songs were sung, jokes said and some traditionally bad acting staged. After Kumbaya everyone walked back to the house for rosehip soup and a bun before bedtime.

The sky was filled with stars and the warm day was followed by a cold night, and some of the Cubs was a bit cold during the night, even if they had put extra night clothes on. But all survived 'til morning and at breakfast it was already warm enough to sit outside with our porridge, sandwiches and the left-over rosehip soup.

After an obsticle course and the packing up of all the equipment, it was time to lower the Swedish flag and the Union Jack that had been flying over camp. We summed up the camp and thanked eachother for making it the best camp ever. Then we sang the scout song and walked back to the road where the parents picked their tired, but happy, children up again.