We all arrived safely and managed to get onto the site and get the tents up. It was chaos as the weather was so bad and the ground so muddy. Many thanks to all the people who gave lifts and for the patience you dispalyed.

After everything was put up and the sleeping bags set out, there was a chance to explore the camp site and see what the other 2,500 people on the this camp looked like.

Usually, it is difficult to get the Scouts into bed and quiet, but half of them were in bed by 10:30 and asleep. The other half took much longer, and Mark was heard to say, at 1:35 in the morning ... " if I have to get up again to tell you to be quiet again Daren I'll ...". You reporter could not quite make out the next phrase, but it seemed to do the trick as evryone was then quiet and fell asleep.

Friday Report by Lawrence (Explorer)

We arrived at Gilwell winter camp site, just north of Chingford, around seven o’clock in the evening, and saw that the whole campsite was covered in an inch of mud. The traffic was once again busy and chaotic in the a drop off zone. Our car, with Peter driving, got moaned at by a very short but very round woman because we were unloading our car in the middle of the road. Her argument was that she needed to drop off supplies but I personally felt that she was just hungry and wanted to get to her chips and burger before anyone else. Many words were exchanged between the writer of this report and the short, round woman.

Once Peter had dropped us off and the short, round woman had disappeared we became lost because none of the car party knew where we were camping. So naturally we began wondering while James, (5ft 7in, good looking, ginger haired stud), rang Steve asking for directions. After many phone calls and a lot of walking in the mud we saw Steve, and made it to the campsite. An award was then presented to be given to Kathryn for bringing the most amounts of bags filled with clothes ever on this winter camp.

The mess tent and the Scouts Icelandic tents were already erected, so all the Explorers had to do was put up their own tents. This was a challenge in its self especially for me, (6ft, brown hair and very good looking), due to my skill at picking broken tents. Don’t think it was just the boys that had trouble with their tents. Serena and Kat both insisted that they knew how to correctly erect their tent when the boys offered to help them. So naturally it was a laughing point when we found out that they had stuck the inner tent floor to the wall of the tent.

Club Foot (Nickname came from Platinum walk 10th November) aka James wanted to camp as close as possible to the leaders. The leaders weren’t happy about this move as much as Clubfoot was, especially in the morning after realising that Club Foot snores like a vacuum cleaner.

After the tents were all erected dinner was served, a traditional soup and bread which was greatly received by the hungry Scouts, Explorers and Leaders. Once dinner had been consumed the Explorers left to go explore and get covered in mud, but not before being threatened with doing the washing up. Traditions have to be upheld so we went to the Quick, which is a hill overlooking the industrial side of London. Once the view had been acknowledged and the photos had been taken we went to our local haunt in Gilwell which is the climbing frame (that we should not be on) at the bottom of the Quick. This killed a few hours and when it began to rain we happily went back to campsite into the mess tent to talk a bit before turning into our cold wet muddy tents.