"Pilgrimage" to Scouting's Roots...

[Kukri]

For a proper pilgrimage to Scouting's roots, Brownsea island would be second on the list after Mafeking or as they call it now Mahikeng.

[Eagle94-A1]

One place I would add is Youlbury International Scout Campsite in Oxfordshire. It is the oldest, continually used Scoutcamp in the world, since 1912. It briefly serves as the British Boy Scout  HQ during WWII when MOD took over Gilwell Park for the war.

 

[ianwilkins]

Looking back at this thread it seems I mentioned my impending trip to Brownsea, so it seems right to feedback...

We actually did it. It's probably only a 2 hour drive from us, but I'd never, in 42 years of scouting (on and off, man and boy), been to Brownsea.

Executive Summary: It was glorious. Okay the weather helped but...And had just enough of the heritage side of things, and "the feels" to be a great nights camping.

We only went for one night, right at the start of our week long summer camp. There were 42 Explorer Scouts, aged 14-18, 18 girls, 22 boys, and 5 leaders. We had the hard work of getting all the kit together getting down to our main site, unloading, packing for the overnight, and dropped off to catch the ferry across the harbour mouth, then into the ferry to Brownsea itself. Once the ferry unhooked from the dock, I felt a weight lift off, that was it now, there's no ferry back until the morning, no shop, we'd just have to deal with anything that came up as and when, nothing more I could do except go with it. That was a good feeling to have.

The ferry was all our own on the way over, as it was the last ferry, no day trippers outbound or they'd be stuck. We walked across the island to our site, not "the" site, that was next door I think. We set up our hammocks and tents, cooked dinner, no open fires, so it was trangias, hike stoves. In fact, they lent us some tables, as they didn't even want gas stoves on the floor due to the fire risk (it was a very dry summer). This was good, as I think the begging peacocks would have just helped themselves straight out the pot if they could have got away with it.

One of the Explorers had brought a bluetooth speaker, I made them switch it off, it just didn't feel right.

We were camped next to a large group of Scouts from Switzerland and Lichtenstein. 

The evening was spent walking down to an old quay at the other end of the island (photo two attached), Pottery pier, where the Explorers amused themselves practicing their skimming techniques, making mosaics like others had done, and having a paddle in the sea, while the sun set. Managed to sit quietly in the woods for long enough to see the native Red Squirrel, now rare in the UK thanks to the invasive Grey.

In the morning, we had breakfast, fighting off the peacocks again. We wandered up to the commemorative stone marker, had the obligatory group photo, we then invested some of our new Explorers, and had a couple of leaders from the Lichtenstein group join us for the ceremony, as they were passing. A special moment I hope. One of our Explorers sported a blue and red necker for the rest of the week, and a leader in Lichtenstein now has one of ours. We then sat down while I read a couple of passages from Scouting for Boys, about a typical day schedule on camp, and BP on scout laws. Had a bit of free time, so some went searching for red squirrels, some went to the providore, where there's badges to buy, and some cases and displays of historical interest, as well as the ceiling of neckers (photo one attached), yes, one of ours was left behind to be put up at a future date.

Time to leave and we walked back across the island, helped another group off the ferry who had brought approximately three bazillion tonnes of kit, so much kit and so long it took to unload that the ferry wanted to leave without us...we protested and jumped on.

And that was that really. It definitely felt good to go, always good to meet scouts from around the world, and "walk in the footsteps" of BP.

 

 

 

[Eagle94-A1]

1 hour ago, ianwilkins said:

 

 

 

Ian,

What troop are  you with, and did they go to Kingsdown or Youlbury in 1995? I ask because I know every necker design is registered to one group only, and I have your necker in my collection!

[ianwilkins]

9 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Ian,

What troop are  you with, and did they go to Kingsdown or Youlbury in 1995? I ask because I know every necker design is registered to one group only, and I have your necker in my collection!

Farnham Explorer Scouts, and no, we didn't even exist in 1995. Never been to Youlbury or Kingsdown (sadly while still a campsite that has special rates for youth groups, Kingsdown got sold off a while back, so isn't a scout campsite anymore - HQ needed more money, sound familiar?). We created that necker design when we were formed in 2002.

And sorry to correct you but neckers are definitely not unique to one group in the UK, I think our rules suggest they are unique within a district (which could be anything between 3-4 groups to 30-40 groups), so that when you do district things you can tell groups apart. And even then it can fall apart, two groups in our district have two subtly different shades of yellow necker, not ideal.

 

[Eagle94-A1]

No worries. Don't remind me of the Kingsdown sell off. I know it had been a Scout camp since the 1940s, and I have some good memories there. And I was repeating what someone told me about UK neckers.

Sadly in the US since 1972, neckers have not been required as part of the Boy Scout uniform. Each troop can make the decision to have one or not. And national has not made it easy to have either. Their standard neckers have been the wrong size for a long time, and when they finally come out with correctly sized neckers, they limited to 4 styles, then they discontinue making them. My old troop went through 4 different neckers in a 6 years. Currently they use a custom one. Troop I am in now also has a custom necker dating back to when the national stopped making them the correct size. Necker colors however date back to 1922.