QUEST!!

31 July 2005- 5 August 2005

We arrived at Cokethorpe School for Quest camp 2005 and were ready and raring to go! On the first day we put up tents and met up with others from our sub camp, Letcombe Brook. There were five rangers, four young leaders from Wantage and one young leader from Abingdon and of course more guides than we could count from White Horse Vale!

We decided to make up a song in honour of Quest as we felt all international camps needed a song and it can be seen on the Quest website (http://www.quest2005.org.uk). That evening we sang our song in the rain at the Campfire and were praised for our loudness!

The next day we walked to another campsite for our senior section overnight camp. We made a little detour through a bush and past an angry farmer and met up with lots of other groups on the way, strangley we all seemed to be coming from different directions even though we had all set of from the same place. With the aid of some singing we finally reached our destination, only about two hours late. We ate some barbeque food and set up our bivouac in the dimming light between two trees. This was to count towards our SSOX challenge as we hoped to not only bivouac but stay up and see the sunrise. At midnight we had chips from the local shop before we snuggled up in the make shift shelter. Luckily for us it didn’t rain!

During Quest we took part in many fun activities including swimming, craft, ceramics, archery and to some people’s humiliation, country dancing! We made friends with the Greek guides and young leaders in our sub camp and wowed them with our singing!

We also got the chance to meet the chief guide, Jenny Leach, who visited the camp and we were asked to sing the “Quest Song” to her. Luckly as we were outside we didn’t deafen her with our singing.

WSS greatly enjoyed rocking to the music played at Quest Idol and laughing at the young guides who were infatuated with a band member called Tom!! On the last night we all felt very privileged that we got to sing at the closing campfire not once, but twice! And after reterning to our camp we all stayed up late playing cards and music games in the huge marquee, as we’ed already taken down our lovely, highly reliable and waterproof tents. We don’t know who stayed up later us or the Guiders, although we were called upon to fix a patrol’s tent because the girls assumed the leaders were in a meeting, hmm!

We all had a great time at quest and took away many great memories, Thank you to all the leaders who organised it so well and provided the lovely food and activities!