I came into the living room the other day and my boys were watching the wrestling on the television. The NFL couldn’t come on quick enough. Anyway there was a wrestler, I’m informed by my youngest called The Rock, who told one of the commentary team to basically ‘Shut up, and know your role.’ Anyway I went back into the kitchen as the one liner sound bites we’re making me laugh. Stood making a coffee, I started to think that maybe ‘The Rock’ had a point. How many people do know their role? How many people actually do their role? And how many try to do other people’s role’s for them? Naturally I got round to Scouting and thought about the number of people in Scouting who seemingly don’t know their role and those that clearly do. It strikes me that in 15 years of Scouting, the amount of districts [...]

One of the best things about going on camp for me is getting the Scout Camp Blanket out, not only does it keep me warm at night or around a campfire, but it gets you talking to strangers. The reason being is that it is covered in scouting badges from all over the world, and is often a draw for the Young members and fellow leaders or blanket holders. I’m at the point now, where my wife has one and my two boys now have their own too. If we’re at a Scout campsite, you can guarantee we’ll be there searching out the badge boxes rather than the sweet tins. We obviously buy a site badge at each site we go to, which is great, especially for the young members. My boys remember every camp straight through a blanket badge. I have since found that when you get your family [...]

It’s that time of year again, when snow is forecast, the rain never seems to stop and the carpet becomes caked in dirt from the kids shoes when they’ve been out playing. Yes, you guessed it, time to start planning/organising summer camp. I have organised 5 summer camps and 100+ weekend camps, I always make my summer camps a week long and it’s always the highlight of the year for the cubs. I usually get about 80% of the Cubs wanting to go, I have found they all seem to have a great time, so they all want to come the following year too. By now I have an idea of where we are going already as each year on summer camp, I chat with the other leaders where they fancy going the following year. This can vary from going somewhere totally new, to re-visiting somewhere that we have previously [...]