TUESDAY, 9 DECEMBER 2008
Remembrance Parade and Hike
On 9th November we had our first Remembrance Parade at St Thomas a Beckett in Northaw. It was great fun but it was FREEZING!!! We were carrying the Union Flag as well as the Scout flag so we had two colour parties! In the picture opposite, both of them are visible, and, if you look carefully, Skip’s there too! Behind them are the Cubs and Beavers and behind them the Brownies and Guides.
Afterwards we went up to Newgate Street for a hike, all um, four of us! It took us all afternoon and most of the evening, we had a really good time; until I got us lost, in the cold, and the dark, and in the middle of nowhere…
The first leg of the hike was from Newgate Street to The Beehive pub. It took us over fields, across roads, round corners and down narrow little footpaths which half the group missed, on at least two occasions! We arrived at the pub with roughly ten minutes to spare and our reward was a bar of chocolate to share, six squares each! (We’re still only halfway through it!)
The next part of our journey was done, not by map (ours was sealed in an envelope), but firstly by tracking signs which changed halfway to hobo signs. Several times there were false trails and some of the signs had been dislodged, damaged or destroyed by walkers, ramblers and horse riders. We arrived at the second base (a bus shelter) with roughly fifteen minutes to spare and won some chocolate hob nobs (we haven’t finished those yet either!!)
The third quarter of our trek was a little bit longer, taking us through a golf course, on which we got lost, luckily not to badly, and had to contact Skip to get us out of the mess we got ourselves into. We didn’t reach our next destination on time, running roughly five minutes late, no prize for us that time!
Our final journey was to take the longest and cover the most distance, not intentionally, but I got us lost. We walked for twenty or so minutes through a wood and then a couple of fields, which is when we reached the main road. By this time it was dark, in the very little light we had from someone’s phone I misread the map and we turned left instead of right. We walked for another fifteen minutes before realising our mistake and contacted Skip. The problem was that we all (including Skip) thought we’d just missed the turning, unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. Skip ran about half a mile in the opposite direction to where we were, we started walking back the way we came and as we realised what had happened Skip started running back the way he’d come; we met roughly halfway and walked the rest of the way home together.
We arrived home almost two hours late and were met by hot baths and cups of cocoa (or blackcurrant, in my case) by our parents.
