The busy season's now officially here and the site's going to be pretty manic for the next few months after a nice quiet spell. Two weekends ago was the first real busy weekend of the year - with big camps from Leith District scouts and also Rosyth District, who were holding their annual St George's Day camp. It was also a busy weekend for the Fordell Fellowship as it was the AGM on the friday night - good attendance as usual and the usual mix of formalities (electing new committee for the next year) and socialising. Thanks go to Pete Merckel for doing a talk about the new Active Support structure (which the Fellowship will change to later in the year) and to Kev Mitchell for doing a really good talk about his work with the Ochils Mountain Rescue Team afterwards.
Both Leith and Rosyth districts had a great time and it was good to see everyone enjoying themselves. The Rosyth kids and adults had a trip away on saturday to the stock cars at Cowdenbeath - free entry but there was one catch which is that they'll have to go back and clean up litter after one of the race meetings in a few weeks time.
Above : Fielder not making much of an effort...
Above : Cub watches in horror as the ball heads straight through the staffhut door and hits Bob the warden.
As well as the 2 big camps there were the usual mix of smaller groups and day visitors, including a visit by the smallest sumo wrestlers yet seen at Fordell...
Above : the smallest sumo wrestlers in the world (probably)
Above : the biggest novelty sideburns in the world (apart from Noddy Holder's)
Other news - as mentioned in the last update the site now has a Bell Boat (soon to be two), and over a period of 3 days recently nearly 50 staff, volunteers and local leaders were trained up at Lochore Meadows to achieve their Bell Boat Helm award. The plan is to keep the boats at the Meadows most of the time, and for Fordell and also local groups to use them for groups of up to 20 participants. The course itself was much fun - everyone on it performed admirably and aside from a few minor mishaps (Brian guiding the boat over a huge buoy and getting it stuck underneath) everyone emerged unscathed and much the wiser.
No photos at present but we'll have some of the boats once they start getting used properly in a few weeks.
The next few weeks are pretty busy and then it's time for the first huge camp of the year, which is the Fordell Fast Forward - a camp for older cubs and younger scouts. Richard Fairbairn from Edinburgh is the camp organiser and has made up a great website for it, so why not have a look at the link above to find out more? Unfortunately all the spaces were filled a long time ago but there will be photos up during and after the event.
Finally it's time once again for the irregular and pointless photo competition. Just tell us who this shy chap / chapess is and you could win an original Fordell comb. Is it Kenny from South Park?
