Saturday, January 09, 2010

Happy New Year!



Hope you're all surviving the freezing weather!

The centre's now fully open again, with quite a few groups braving the icy conditions. The first group of the year were some mad explorers from Glasgow who turned up on the 2nd January for a weekend of activities (mostly indoors though) and a spot of sledging on flagpole hill.

The past few months have been pretty busy - here's a quick roundup of what's been happening.

November saw us holding two of our regular courses - GNAS archery one over 2 weekends and Brian & June's popular first aid course over 1 weekend.

We were also honoured to have a visit from Radio Scotland who came to record some material for one of their programmes : Bob became a star after being interviewed and there was also the excitement for the listeners of listening to crate climbing and pioneering on the radio!! What fun, you could really feel the tension as the scouts finished off their square lashings.

Into December and still busy in terms of groups. The staff treated themselves to a fancy new TV, after suffering with the old one for far too long. Plans to improve the reception by installing Sky Freeview were quickly dashed due to signal problems, but hopefully we can find a solution soon. Of course, it was also time for the annual Christmas Meal which was fantastic - this year we headed out for a spot of 10-pin bowling then back to the conference room for a great meal (courtesy of the new caterers) and a fab xmas quiz hosted by Claire & Lindsey.

There's another busy year ahead with a few new events - more updates soon but till then here's a random selection of photos from the past few months.


Above : the staff had to help a few cars out of the iced-up carpark in December


Above : Henry trying out his new sledge


Above : Foggiest day ever - Bob waits in vain at flagbreak for the scouts to arrive.


Above : How do his feet reach the pedals?


Above : Sleeping beauty


Above : Radio pioneering - Bob being interviewed about this exciting new extreme sport.


Above : Teambuilding in the rain.


Above : new staffhut TV, a huge improvement over the old one.


Above : Bob showing Brian how wide the well was which he found the donkey in.


Above : Fordell Christmas dinner 2009


Above : Ian tries for a new world record of some description.



Above : Stevie enjoying the traditional Christmas party games


Above : Luckily, Brian didn't seem to have suffered any serious damage.