Life in the Bus Lane

This weekend was our first group scout camp for several years, and it was a tad on the chilly side. You can tell it’s cold when you have to crack the ice off of the tent zip before you can get out in the morning.

We did our bit helping out planting the Avon Scouts Centenary Wood on the Saturday morning, then spent the rest of the weekend doing scout stuff and trying to keep warm.

I can’t believe they let this bloke loose with scouts.

It was a good weekend, but I’m glad to be back home in the warm now.

This weekend I was at Avon Scout Network’s Intense, a camp and activity weekend for Network Scouts. Not only was I on photography duty, but I was also helping run the security for the bar and ensuing camp fire, the downside of this was not getting to bed until 3:30 in the morning, then having to be up again a few hours later.

Saturday was activity day, I ended up spending a lot of it hanging around and practicing my meagre archery skills.

Sunday was the piano bash, two hours of violence and destruction, great fun to watch, no doubt even more fun to participate in.

Photos from the weekend.

The first Scout camp took place on the 1st August 1907, so to commemorate the event scouts all over the world had a Sunrise Ceremony. The Avon one was on Weston Super Mare beach front, with promise renewal ceremonies at 8am, 11:30am, and 4pm, each with a live linkup with another ceremony. 8am was with a group near Lake Ontario, Canada, 11:30 with a group in Avon, near Perth, Australia, and 4pm was back with the Canadians again.

The weather was absolutely fantastic, I’ve actually come back with sunburn which is a nice feeling after all the recent rain.

The official Scout blurb is here: http://www.scouts.org.uk/sunrise/

For those of you who were unaware, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the first ever scout camp, held on Brownsea Island in August 1907. As part of the celebrations the World Scout Jamboree is being held in the UK at Hylands Park near Chelmsford. We went up last Thursday to do 4 days work as part of the Jamboree Build Team who started work at the end of June, and some of them won’t finish until mid-August.

Apart from Thursday, the rain held off for most of the weekend, although Friday was very windy. I ended up running the registration office for several days, spent a day working in catering, and one other day working in the warehouse unboxing 200 or so festival tents. I never want to see another one of those ever again.

Apparently there was 40mm of rain at camp yesterday, which explains why I had to get towed out of the mudfest which used to be the car park at the end of the day.

Peter Duncan, Chief Scout, at Ton of Fun camp, Woodhouse Park, May 2007.

I’ve spent most of this weekend up in Royal Victoria Park helping run the St George’s Day scout funday. Saturday was mostly spent putting up a huge marquee which took 15 of us over 5 hours to erect, I was slightly broken afterwards. Copious quantities of alcohol soon numbed the pain, but at 7:45 this morning I was back in the park again nursing a hangover, this time in my role of official event photographer. We had all sorts of weather during the day, overcast and cool in the morning, rain early afternoon, then hot and sunny for the rest of the day, I now have a nicely sunburned face.

As a result of todays work I have a sore back from lugging a heavy bag of camera kit around all day, and 500 or so photos to filter through, post-process, and send off to the ACC Communications for him to deal with as he sees fit.

A Worm’s Eye View of St George’s Day

It’s the Bath Half Marathon time of year again, which combined with the clock change meant I got out of bed at an unfeasibly early hour on a Sunday morning.

I shunned my usual work post and headed into town for a bit of variety, we ended up stationed in Widcombe, cunningly close to Louise’s flat, it’s proper toilet, and most importantly it’s kettle. We had two pallets of water, and three pallets of Lucozade to hand out, but were left with quite a lot of Lucozade, some of which is now on the floor behind me, along with about 50 pre-opened bottles of water. The hardest part was probably shifting an entire pallet of Lucozade into the back of a van at the end of the race, it didn’t do my back much good.

As normal I was clutching a camera bag, and gave the 1.4x convertor it’s first proper test on the 70-200/2.8, I was very impressed with the results.

More pics on Flickr and in the usual place: Bath Half Marathon 2007

Bigger version

Photographs:
After the event we will be able to provide quality photographs of Scouting volunteers assisting at the event.

Apparently they do. I’d best charge some camera batteries and learn how to take quality photographs then in time for the weekend.