This year
the Scout Expedition was to Exmoor.
A great location had been found in a true greenfield site (nothing but trees
and a river)
The location was ideally situated for camp based activities, remote hiking
and back packing
as well as some great Mountain Biking and horse riding.
Xmoor '99 was going to be a great Camp!!
Hello, my name’s Glenn and I went on Cookham Scouts’ Summer Camp’99 to Exmoor.
We were going by train
so we dropped off our bags for the lorry to take on Friday evening.
When I got to Reading (Saturday) I was a bit early for the train so I went
around looking in shops until it was time to meet the others at the train
station. I went in and started to look for the other Scouts and then I saw
a group of people wearing Exmoor t-shirts so I went and met up with them.
I was sitting down with
my friends Sean and Ian when a man came up to us and said “You look bored,
I’ll treat you all to an ice cream”. We looked at each other and thought ‘cool!’
so then he gave a Scout about £7.00 and said “Hold on, I’m just going to get
more money”
In the meantime, most of us got an ice cream and two minutes later the man
came back and got the rest an ice cream. On the way there (to Taunton on the
train) we ate our packed lunch and got off (the train) at Taunton. We did
the rest of the journey by minibus.
When we got there (the
campsite) we had to put up our tents and dining shelters, dig a fire pit,
unpack and cook our dinners. The campsite had a stream and because it was
hot during the week we often went to a deep part and jumped off a rock into
it.
On Monday and Friday it was ‘activities’ day where we did mountain biking;
pony trekking and other, on-site, activities. On Tuesday the older Scouts
(12+) went on a thirty six hour hike and the younger Scouts (11-) went on
a day hike.
I went on the thirty six hour hike and we had to take a tent, sleeping bag, roll matt, cooking equipment, food, plenty of drink, a torch etc., . We left before lunch in a minibus which dropped as off at a point we had to walk on from. It was really tiring and we were regularly stopping for breaks. When we got to the campsite we stopped and set up our tents for the night and ate some boil-in-the-bag meals and went to sleep early so we could wake up ready for the second part of the hike.
On the second day we had to walk up a massive hill called Dunkey Beacon where we saw two wild horses. When we got back to the main campsite we just dropped down to the ground and had a big rest, then we had pizza for lunch. On Thursday we went to a market / town. There was a man selling Playstation games for £5.00 each and we asked why they were so cheap, and he said “None of your business!” so we just walked away. Afterwards we went swimming at a leisure centre then on Saturday it was time to pack away, do a litter sweep and make the long journey back home..