Burns Weekend

Above : Another first for Fordell - the world's only combined swimming pool and campfire circle.

Four weekends into the new season and things were still pretty quiet on the camping front, although a few keen scout groups from Fife and Glasgow decided to defy the weather and come anyway. Most of the site was unuseable due to the recent rainfall, but a few dryish spots were found and camps set up. Campfires look like they will be a long way away as the campfire circle is still completely submerged; at the very least they might require an extra couple of firelighters to get going.















Above : In the absence of a ladder, Jean stands on the next best thing - Ginga's left shoulder.

A healthy staff turnout and few activities on the saturday led to a mass-decorating session in the staffhut. After lots of work last year in the hut replacing ceilings and lighting, the next stage was to paint the lounge and toilets. After an intensive shift all-day saturday, the lounge had been treated to a shiny new coat of white eggshell paint, as had most of the staff's hands. Unfortunately no-one had remembered to buy any thinners or hand-cleaner beforehand so Stevie, as the only one not covered in paint, was despached to Homebase to pick some up.
The toilets were also treated to a bit of a makeover, with a nice lilac for the girls and a macho blue for the guys (who didn't like the lilac much).















Above : Intricate brushwork was required to paint around all the spiders' webs in the lounge.

In the evening, the site welcomed the local Inch Scout Fellowship who were holding their annual Burns Supper in the Henderson building. Some of the Fordell staff attended and were treated to a fantastic 5-course meal (actually 6 since most had a second helping of the haggis starter). After the traditional formalities and some particularly bad jokes by chairman and retiring site quartermaster Pete, the evening continued until the early hours with a healthy mix of conversation and karaoke.















Above : The traditional part of every Burns Supper - Brian reads out the football results.

Sunday saw a bit more decorating work carried out in the hut, along with the now-traditional ceremony of starting up the space-bus (see previous post) to keep its batteries charged up.

Things should start getting a bit more busier from now on - the first busy weekend being the new activ-8 camp which is being held on th 15-17th February.

Bumper New Year Update!

After the traditional festive shutdown, the centre is looking forward to another busy and exciting year. As a special New Year gift, we are offering 3 blog updates for the price of 1 and if you scroll down after this entry you'll find out what happened in the site during December too.

All was quiet on site on the 11-13th January, no campers at all presumably because of the light coating of snow and ice everywhere. The Henderson centre welcomed a large group of nearby guide leaders who were in to check out the site and discuss their huge (600+) camp which they will run later in the summer.

Over the winter months lots of work has taken place on creating new activities, and one of these is a bmx trials track which can be taken to bits and assembled anywhere with a flat(ish) surface. The staff spent most of saturday finishing off the work on this, most of which had been carried out by a local helper. The course comprises 7 different obstacles, all of which are designed to be tricky but very close to the ground to make them as safe as possible.















Above : Test-pilot Callum has a narrow escape after plunging down the sheer 2-inch drop to the ground.

After several hours of building, testing and falling off the obstacles, the project was finished and ready for groups to try out in the coming months. Callum, who has bravely tested all the obstacles extensively, then suffered the embarrassment of falling off his own bike on his way home whilst negotiating a particularly difficult straight, flat road with no obstacles at all.



Above : Callum's tribute to the late, great Evel Knievel -attempting a jump over the new 'Space Bus'. Close, but perhaps a slightly bigger ramp is required next time (click to play)

On sunday there was only one group visiting - a birthday party group who took part in the challenge course, caving and new inflatable gladiators arena. In the morning the staff spent a while sorting out a drainage problem on the exit road which had caused huge puddles to appear; however one hour later and with the help of a steel marquee pin and sledgehammer and the puddles had miraculously disappeared.

In the afternoon a staff training session had been arranged for one of the site's new facilities...the Space Bus (see video above and pics below). This is an old double-decker bus which is owned by Dunfermline East Church and has been converted into a 'playbus' with games and facilities onboard. The church are storing the bus at Fordell, and in return the site will be use it occasionally for groups. One of the church members came in to show everyone (12 staff) how everything worked and how to operate the lighting, heating, etc. The inside has had a huge amount of work carried out, and has full heating, lighting, TV screens, playstations, music, etc. The church are hoping to have the outside painted in a more 'cool' style, and described it as looking like a 'bathroom on wheels' at the moment!















Above/below : Space Bus training

Xmas Party

Above : "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down"

The weekend of the annual Fordell staff party, a chance to relax and enjoy some fine food and entertainment after a busy year. This year, a few different events had been arranged and things kicked off saturday morning with a thorough testing of the new sumo suits / inflatable gladiators arena / giant boxing gloves. These had arrived the weekend before and obviously needed to be extensively evaluated before being used for paying customers.















Above : Some of the staff looking a bit bloated after eating too much at the meal

After lunch the first ever Fordell Xmas Archery Competition took place. Around 15 took part, and after an hour of intense competition and underhand tactics, Ali was declared the winner overall. The event looks likely to take place annually, giving the less-gifted ones a whole year to improve or work out how to manipulate the scoring system.

A quick trip to Dalgety Bay followed for the actual Christmas meal, which was attended by over 20 and judged a success by all. After returning to Fordell, Pete Merckel (site quartermaster) gave a great slide presentation on his recent trip to Everest basecamp as part of the 7 summits expedition, after which he was presented with a few gifts to mark his upcoming retiral from his role at the site in January after many years of service.

The rest of the evening/early morning was spent with the traditonal socialising / music / karaoke (playstation-style) and pretending to be a guitar-hero with the amazing Wii (with various degrees of success).

A fairly relaxed sunday (although some crazy explorer scouts wanted some outdoor activities which had to be provided despite the freezing cold), and it was time for a few weeks break for most and chance to recover before another busy year.

Waterworld

Above : Annual Fordell silly grin competition winner.


Several days of torrential rain led to the difficult decision to cancel one the of the main events of the year, the 'Final Countdown'. This was part of the '12 camps of 2007' and had been intended to be an action-packed weekend camp for Explorer scouts from across the country; however due to the weather it was decided that the camping areas were far too wet to host the event and it was cancelled midweek. A few local explorer scouts did come in for the weekend, however, and ran their own activities from the relative warmth of the Richmond Chalet.
















Above : Dave, Ginga and Stevie playing Giant Jenga

The weather was fairly dry on saturday, although the fields were waterlogged, and the staff spent the day carrying out a number of tasks on site (moving wood, trimming trees). Things got much busier in the evening when the heavy rain returned and an SOS was received from the Explorers in the Richmond Chalet that they were being flooded out. A crack response-unit was despached from the staffhut armed with spades, torches (well one) and sandbags (well bags of rocksalt), and an hour later had managed to clear up the flood and divert the water elsewhere.
In restrospect, it was realised that the correct decision had been made to cancel the camp, as it would have been chaotic if there had been hundreds of people camping on the saturday night.















Above : Emergency Response Unit in action. Bright light at top RHS is Ali - as the only person with a headtorch, he was assigned the role of Emergency Lamppost.

Sunday was altogether more relaxing with no major incidents and the only drainage problem being a significant leak from the staff urn during the day of approximately 10 cups/hour.

Scottish Conference 2007

Above : Despite a complete lack of snow, the Scottish Olympic hopefuls pressed on with their training session on the sunday morning.


An impressive turnout from the Fordell staff this weekend with a total of 17 helpers over the two days to assist with a couple of big events. First up was a visit from a local youth football club (Kelty), who arrived on saturday lunchtime for 4 hours of activities. Most of the site's activities were on offer and despite the threat of rain early on everything went well before the early demise of the sun just before 5pm called a halt to the fun.

A total of around 80 youngsters took part in the day, along with a healthy group of club coaches, helpers and parents. In between bases, each group had the chance to have some food which had been prepared by the adults - the first group of kids rather amusingly helping themselves to all the meat sandwiches and leaving the rest with the less-popular cheese ones.

After 4 hours of activities the group moved to the wet weather hall where the club coaches had an award ceremony to give out the season's trophies.















Above : All shook up - young Elvis fan gets carried away during team-building base at Aviemore.

On the sunday, the staff split into two (not literally of course) with 8 going up to run a teambuilding session at the Scottish Scout Conference in Aviemore and the others taking care of the usual work on site.
After an unheard-of early departure of 7am, the teambuilders arrived in Aviemore just after 9am and set about setting up their equipment in the carpark of the hotel. From 10am till lunchtime the staff entertained nearly 100 youngsters who were taking part in the conference with 5 different bases requiring various forms of teamwork, agility and balance, while a bemused long-distance lorry driver watched on in wonder.















Above : Innovative youngsters demonstrate their idea for the new Forth crossing to interested politicians.

After lunch, the Fordell staff participated in the 'marketplace', where a number of different activity centres and organisations had the opportunity to showcase their products and services in the main exhibition area of the hotel. A fairly sharp exit was required in order to get back down to the site and finish off a few tasks, so it wasn't possible to catch the end of the conference, but most of the staff had the chance to wander round the other bases and stalls in the hotel first.

Arriving back at Fordell just after 4pm, the teambuilders were pleasantly surprised to find most of the jobs already completed, leaving them with just the task of checking that the tea urn was still working properly and performing a statutory taste test.

GNAS Archery Leader course

Above : Course tutor Derek passing on top shooting tips to the class.

Although it's been a fairly quiet month in terms of campers and visitors, the centre has been hosting a few training courses which have been well-attended. A weekend emergency first-aid course run by staff member Brian last weekend was sandwiched between a 2-part GNAS Archery Leader course which has been a regular feature over the past few years.

The archery course is run over 4 days, the first 3 being training and the final one being an assessment. Local archery guru Derek was the main tutor as before, with regional coach Frank coming all the way down from Aberdeen on the sunday for the umpteenth time to assess the candidates.

12 people attended the course in total - a mixture of staff from Fordell and Auchengillan activity centres, regular site users Fairbridge (Edinburgh), one local leader and local guy Steve who is planning on starting up an archery club at his childrens' primary school soon.
















Above : No James, I think you'll find that your arrows are the ones which are lying on the ground next to the target.

In a pretty intensive few days, Derek covered a huge range of sessions including shooting technique, coaching, equipment selection and maintenance and safety. In between the two weekends the course members had the chance to improve their technique before the assessment and also brush up on the theory side of things.
















Above : Shortsighted Tristan from Auchengillan aims for the yellow, which turns out to be the sun. Surprisingly, he hits it first time but receives minor burns whilst retrieving it.


By the assessment weekend all the participants had managed to improve their own techniques considerably, now regularly hitting the target gold instead of the rest of the target / safety net / wet weather hall roof girders (delete as applicable).

After the formal training part of the course was over, some of the residentual members took the opportunity to watch Scotland's Euro 2008 hopes evaporate, although one particular course member from a well-known west-coast activity centre had the embarrassment of having to be rescued from the roof of the staffhut after trying to retrieve his football (not that we'd be cruel enough to post a photo here)




















Above : Bob catches Auchengillan staff member red-handed, trying to steal the roof off the staff-hut.

On the sunday, assessor Frank spent several hours testing everyone's knowledge and practical ability, and remarked that the group had been one of the best he'd seen in recent times. All participants received their Archery Leader award and will now be entitled to instruct sessions on their own using the skills picked up during the course.

Beaver Sleepover / Indian Rope Trick

Above : The Beavers set up their base camp in the wet weather hall, where they would rest overnight before starting their expedition to the site tuckshop the following morning.

The main event of this weekend was the national Beaver Sleepover which saw over 30 beaver scouts plus their leaders and some parents arriving on saturday afternoon for 24 hours of fun and games, including the chance to camp in proper tents, albeit within the safety of the wet weather hall. This turned out to be the best option by far, as saturday night saw some wild weather which soaked the outside campers; a SSAGO group from St. Andrews University and staff member Henry's scout group from Dunfermline. Apart from this brief spot of bad weather, the rest of the weekend was good with all activities going ahead as normal. Despite having had a relatively sleepless night due to the novelty of having their first camp (and no doubt too much fizzy juice and sugary sweets), the beavers were out of their 'campsite' early sunday morning for several hours of activities including archery before being picked up mid-afternoon to go home for a proper sleep to ensure they didn't spend the next day at school sleeping.















Above : Indian Rope Trick. Ali amazes Dave with his levitation skills.

As there weren't too many activity sessions over the weekend, the Fordell staff were unsure what to do work-wise instead, but in a moment of inspiration on Friday night someone suggested that it would be good idea to enhance the climbing tower a bit by adding a 'rope ladder' of some form to the overhanging side (as if it wasn't hard enough for some already).

On saturday afternoon a suitable hefty rope was soon found in Ye Olde Rope Store and after a few experiments a knotted rope was added to the tower. Unfortunately none of the staff present were fit/agile/light enough to try it out (the best attempt getting 2 feet off the ground), so it was left to a birthday party group to become the first to try it out, most of the kids climbing effortlessly to the top. Feedback from them was good - they enjoyed climbing the rope more than using the holds on the wall - so the new addition looks set to stay.













Above : (Left) Bob wonders how he is going to carry out the necessary weight/stress tests on the new rope. (Right) Problem solved!