In the midst of what might be one of the driest and warmest British summers that I can remember, our Cub pack and Woodland Beavers went to Secret Agent Training Camp at Youlbury Activity Centre!
After laying their bags and sleeping mats out in their teepees (yes teepees – they didn’t even need to put up any tents!), they started off the weekend by making their name badges. The name badges gave each person a secret agent ID number that they would need to remember for the whole weekend!
After saying that it has been one of the driest summers I can remember, the heavens opened on us during our orientation tour! Luckily we all had our raincoats, but we were all a bit soggy to say the least! Everyone loved it though, as we’d all been missing the rain a bit! After the walk we changed our plans and retreated inside the mess tent. Each of the Cubs then had a go at lighting a match, and then we played games inside (it was quite a big tent!). We ended the night with hotdogs and hot chocolate, then we all went to bed, looking forward to the Beavers joining us for the weekend on the Saturday morning.
Saturday
We woke up to a far drier morning and had a fantastic breakfast of fried eggs, sausages, beans, bread and cereal. Next up was tent inspection, which everyone passed with flying colours! Whilst we were waiting for the Beavers to arrive, the Cubs completed a scavenger hunt with a twist! They had to find items around the campsite that met descriptors such as ‘round’, but they were written in code! For example ‘round’ was now ‘Romeo Oscar Uniform November Delta’!
After a quick drink and snack, the Cubs paired up with Beavers, and the made disguises out of newspaper – even Beanie Beaver had a go! There were some very good disguises made, and Akela led the way with her um…unusual design.
It was then time for a lunch of burgers, to restore the secret agents’ energy before the afternoons activities!
After lunch it was warming up again, so we all reapplied our suncream, before we went to do either tomahawk throwing or crate stacking! Everyone had great fun testing out their secret agent abilities!
To end the afternoon we split into four groups and had a go at various activities at different bases. The bases included bomb disposal (the group had to work as a team to move certain contaminants to areas using five or six strings that were attached to the containers), a blindfold trail (where they had to trust one another to leave them in the correct direction), codes (where they had to write and decipher secret messages), and semaphore (they used flags to send messages in semaphore).
We had a lovely dinner of pasta bolognese, followed by apple pie and custard! Afterwards we went and played capture the flag in the woods, which was great fun as we had so much space to run around in! We finally ended the night with singing songs around the campfire and toasting marshmallows.
Sunday
The next day we did have a mission planned for everyone to test out the skills they had learnt, but when we woke we found out that someone had stolen the cake that everyone had bought to camp!
After another great cooked breakfast, the Cubs split into groups to try and deduce who the cake thief was! The bases were chromatography (using water to allow ink to separate to see who’s pens were used to write a note), fingerprinting (finding out who’s finger prints were found at the crime scene), code breaking (using both a word wheel and a hidden postcard code), and unlocking the safe box to see the evidence inside.
After a long morning of detective work, we finally found out that it was Akela who had stolen the cake!! We celebrated by eating some cake!
After some free time, we had lunch – we ate our wraps ‘al fresco’!
After an ice pop and the closing ceremony, it was time to go home – thank you to everyone for such a great weekend!