This year the Venture Scouts have been doing a whole variety of activities including karting, hockey, visits to the cinema and have also started to do the Duke of Edinburgh’s Bronze award. The list of activities for this is very wide and they have been working hard to attain the award.

The ventures went to summer camp and made several friends, many of which we have already been back to visit. The eight Ventures who went learnt many new skills, including how to race a toilet and how to evade leaders when returning from the disco two hours after they were told to be back in bed! Some of the friends from summer camp came back to visit when we had our Christmas dinner. This was held in the Scout Hut and all the arrangements regarding cooking the food, drinks and table ware were planned by the Ventures themselves. The ventures attempted to do their version of can’t cook won’t cook. The name of this was soon changed to can’t cook can’t be bothered to cook.

Soon after this attempt, five Ventures went to the Gilwell winter camp in January 2002. The ground was rock hard, the temperature very cold, but a warm welcome was given us. Again, many old friends were there and a vast array of activities were on hand, from rock climbing, rodeo riding, disco’s, laser shooting and lassoing. The traditional mud slide was attempted with not very good results! (see pictures on the board).

In January the boys planned out the events for the forthcoming year, and included building a wooden canoe, making small morse code buzzer units and learning basic morse code techniques, remote control car racing, bike maintenance, circuit training, a games night and video night, backwoods cooking, rifle shooting (thanks to Ray Kilby), a wide game at Chicksands (in the pitch dark!), river cleaning and a bike ride. Amongst all of this, the name of the group was officially changed to Stotfold Explorers, and the first expedition was planned for Derbyshire. Eight Explorers and the two leaders spent the bank holiday weekend in a Scout Hut in Derbyshire, thanks to the 1 Glossop Scout group and the Derbyshire district Officer. They also supplied us with a leader who was one of the Mountain Rescue Teams in the area, who took us on a 17 mile walk across the Peaks, up to Kinder Fall and over to some fascinating airplane crash sites. On our second day we carried out our own 6 mile walk up Win Hill above Ladybower reservoir. Such was the success of the weekend, that all agreed we will make it an annual event.
Another notable event was the St Georges Parade in Biggleswade. It was pleasing for Andrew and Steve to see seven of the boys at the parade, and we were the only section of Explorers to walk and fly our flag as a group!

In the coming months, there are exciting changes for the group to experience. The Explorers will work more closely with other groups in the district and hopefully from September will be involved in one outdoor activity weekend / day each month. The group has now settled down to become the largest Explorers groups in the district, if not the county, with 11 Explorers on the books, with an average weekly turn out of between 9 and 11, despite outside commitments such as K53 and Year 10 exams!. Both Andrew and Steve are very positive about the future of the group and are enormously proud of what is becoming an enthusiastic, considerate and hard working group of young people, and both leaders are confident that the group will go from strength to strength in the coming years.