Always planning something

It's Monday again (these seem to come around with alarming regularity) and another chance for me to reflect on my weekend.

The clocks went back on Sunday, which was a nice surprise as I had forgotten this was happening. I woke up at 7 am on Sunday feeling thoroughly refreshed and slightly perplexed, until I realised why. I managed to reset the clocks on the microwave and the cooker, which entailed rather a lot of button poking until things flashed in the correct places.

This weekend was another busy one for our family, and I mentioned to R that we hadn't actually spent a weekend together as a family in over a month, due to cub camp, him doing Three Peaks, another Scout camp this weekend, and something else that I have forgotten what it was. Anyway, 4 weekends of spending time away from each other means next weekend we need to do something memorable as a family (we have already discussed going to MK to do some Christmas shopping, which is unheard of for us as we usually favour the last-minute Amazon prime approach to Christmas).

On Friday night I drove R, C and his friend O to Gilwell Park near Chingford in Essex for Scarefest, a Halloween-themed camp for Cubs, Scouts, and Explorers. C and O are Explorers and R is an Explorer leader now. I've never been to Gilwell, so it was nice to experience the place, albeit in the dark. I was slightly worried at the already-quite-high levels of mud, which was on a dry day, and the fact C had only brought one pair of boots with him and no waterproofs (he announced this in the car as we pulled up to drop off). After berating him at length for being an idiot (and in front of his friend, who was bemused and possibly a bit scared of getting a similar telling-off) I left the three of them for the weekend.

On Saturday I received an early-morning message: essential kit had been left behind, could I bring it to camp please? The regulators for the new cadacs had been left behind, which connect the stoves to the gas bottles. So they couldn't make breakfast. I traipsed back to Gilwell with N in tow, with the kit, R's pillow, and a spare pair of boots for C. For my trouble I received a sausage muffin and a cup of tea, so all was not bad. However, it did highlight to me the potential for illegal entry on-site, since I was not challenged while walking through the campsite and there was no security border or official entrance. I made a note to never bring my Cubs to Gilwell for this reason, I couldn't cope with worrying about them wandering off!

N and I decided to go via our friend's cafe on the way home for an early lunch, since we had been made to get up early. We visited Box of Cakes in Stotfold for ice cream waffles and sausage rolls, very nutritious. Then instead of going home, we headed to Boyd Scout campsite in Henlow, because I had planned to recce a walk route for the Cubs in a few weeks. We had a fun 3 mile walk in the rain, finishing at the park and then the pub (Five Bells); decision made that we wouldn't take the Cubs on this walk as it was a bit too far, so I need to recce another route next weekend. We finally arrived home 5 hours after we had left that morning, and it was lovely to get the heating on and our boots off.