It was Scouting that got me into Bush Crafting, can any other claim the same?
- Thread starter Silverclaws2
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BushMoot: Come along to the amazing Summer Moot 31st July - 5th August (extended Moot : 27th July - 8th August), a festival of bushcrafting and camping in a beautiful woodland PLEASE CLICK HERE for more information.
Yes, yes and yes.
Bit of time in Guides then to Venture Scouts as soon as I hit the minimum age. Joined a unit that did a lot of camping and pioneering. Worked through to Queens Scout, had my day at Windsor.
Did a couple of summers on service crews on major scout campsites, including a couple of weeks at Gillwell Park. At uni, was an ASL for a while before I became an industry-based research student, moved away and lost touch.
I got a lot out of it and put a fair bit back.
Different times though, don't think could do now what we did then.
I often think when the media goes on about gangs, this is nothing new, it's why Baden-Powell wrote "Scouting for Boys"- by his admission, drawing on a "natural tendency for boys to form gangs" and channelling that urge to help the boys become responsible citizens.
It was always the pioneering and backwoods stuff that attracted me.
GC
I can see your point, and I know you're not having a go at me
It's a tricksy and sensitive thing to navigate, especially when those of us who tend to the more tomboyish (including me) didn't get on with the culture in 1980s Guides, which seemed to hold particular expectations of what it meant to *be* a girl. If you didn't fit in with that, the adults back then didn't get it and nor did most of the other girls.
so it may be less to do with activities as such, even though that's still part of it given my earlier comment about how there was nothing outside the school hall. It's both the doing and the being, and widening the scope of both. Maybe 2020s Girlguiding offers that wider scope now.
and I guess this also picks up the original thread, in that what wasn't available to me then is there for the learning now, via coming into bushcraft as an adult.
It probably depends upon the leaders, but we have a Guides group who meet in a church hall next door to our scout hut. They do different activities to Scouts, possibly more traditional ones, and their leader has apparently made reference to girls going to scouts instead if they want to do some activities that they do not do.I can see your point, and I know you're not having a go at me
It's a tricksy and sensitive thing to navigate, especially when those of us who tend to the more tomboyish (including me) didn't get on with the culture in 1980s Guides, which seemed to hold particular expectations of what it meant to *be* a girl. If you didn't fit in with that, the adults back then didn't get it and nor did most of the other girls.
so it may be less to do with activities as such, even though that's still part of it given my earlier comment about how there was nothing outside the school hall. It's both the doing and the being, and widening the scope of both. Maybe 2020s Girlguiding offers that wider scope now.
and I guess this also picks up the original thread, in that what wasn't available to me then is there for the learning now, via coming into bushcraft as an adult.
My daughter and her friends have enjoyed Scouts and Explorers.
I was never in the Scouts at all. I was in the Sea Cadets for a year or so but left having never so much as touched a boat in my time there.
I've no idea why I didn't join the scouts though, possibly total ignorance to it as I'm sure I would have enjoyed it.
However I was the perfect age for the "Country tracks" episodes with Ray Mears and they were fundamental to my interest in it all.
I'd really like to get my boys into Scouts if I can but the waiting lists are eye wateringly long.
Cheers
Andy
I've no idea why I didn't join the scouts though, possibly total ignorance to it as I'm sure I would have enjoyed it.
However I was the perfect age for the "Country tracks" episodes with Ray Mears and they were fundamental to my interest in it all.
I'd really like to get my boys into Scouts if I can but the waiting lists are eye wateringly long.
Cheers
Andy
The waiting lists are long because there is a problem with recruiting adult leaders for beyond anything else modern working practices and hours can hinder involvement.
I’m not sure how relevant today’s Scout and Guide movement is regarding Bushcraft. My experience ranges from antiquated to dated.
I was a member of the 3rd Altrincham Scout group - a secondary School based group so there were no cubs and it predated beavers.
It was a large “old fashioned” and non-militaristic group. Our uniform was green and blue and we were one of the last troops to wear the felt, wide brimmed, hats.
The troop was highly active. Scouts and Ventures were skilled in the construction of bridges, towers and other structures using lashings and pioneering poles. We made rafts, swam in the river Bolin and entered soap box derbies.
I learned a lot about ropes, camping (in tents) and what we termed “pioneering” rather than survival.
My own contribution was minimal because despite a wonderful (somewhat eccentric) Scout Master, his officers were all my school teachers. In the words of Donald Sutherland:
Forward a generation and I found myself chairing a local Scout Group. I did not adopt the uniform but other leaders did.
Sports seemed to be the most usual pastime with a period of “badge work” tolerated before some more relaxed activity.
We didn’t own a single pioneering pole and when I suggested that we should have such equipment I was gently mocked.
This was not an isolated incidence. Other local troops refused to march on parades and couldn’t erect an Icelandic canvas tent.
My son was the only member to achieve pioneer and advanced pioneer skills. Those he learned outside of the group.
Perhaps, yet another generation on, the wheel has turned again. I hope so.
I learned my camping and outdoor skills on the tramp. I long post-date the Great Trespass but was highly influenced by it and subsequent publications about it. The Manchester Rambler could have been written about me. (With the exception that I did not leave a fiancé at the alter!!!!)
I have “walked where I will over mountain and hill and I’ve slept where the bracken is deep.” This, quite a lot of getting cold, wet and hungry plus several (reasonably calm) discussions with land owners/agents have taught me most of what I know about survival and my own capacities.
If Scouting taught me anything it was to walk my talk; something that I have extended to my beliefs, life and my contributions to this forum.
I was a member of the 3rd Altrincham Scout group - a secondary School based group so there were no cubs and it predated beavers.
It was a large “old fashioned” and non-militaristic group. Our uniform was green and blue and we were one of the last troops to wear the felt, wide brimmed, hats.
The troop was highly active. Scouts and Ventures were skilled in the construction of bridges, towers and other structures using lashings and pioneering poles. We made rafts, swam in the river Bolin and entered soap box derbies.
I learned a lot about ropes, camping (in tents) and what we termed “pioneering” rather than survival.
My own contribution was minimal because despite a wonderful (somewhat eccentric) Scout Master, his officers were all my school teachers. In the words of Donald Sutherland:
Forward a generation and I found myself chairing a local Scout Group. I did not adopt the uniform but other leaders did.
Sports seemed to be the most usual pastime with a period of “badge work” tolerated before some more relaxed activity.
We didn’t own a single pioneering pole and when I suggested that we should have such equipment I was gently mocked.
This was not an isolated incidence. Other local troops refused to march on parades and couldn’t erect an Icelandic canvas tent.
My son was the only member to achieve pioneer and advanced pioneer skills. Those he learned outside of the group.
Perhaps, yet another generation on, the wheel has turned again. I hope so.
I learned my camping and outdoor skills on the tramp. I long post-date the Great Trespass but was highly influenced by it and subsequent publications about it. The Manchester Rambler could have been written about me. (With the exception that I did not leave a fiancé at the alter!!!!)
I have “walked where I will over mountain and hill and I’ve slept where the bracken is deep.” This, quite a lot of getting cold, wet and hungry plus several (reasonably calm) discussions with land owners/agents have taught me most of what I know about survival and my own capacities.
If Scouting taught me anything it was to walk my talk; something that I have extended to my beliefs, life and my contributions to this forum.
The most recent info about numbers of Guides I can currently find is dated 2022:
"Girlguiding, the leading charity for girls and young women, has reported a 20 per cent increase in its young membership (members aged 4-18) since 2021 from 239,222 up to 290,468."
https://www.girlguiding.org.uk/about-us/press-releases/membership-numbers-and-appeal-for-volunteers/
and for Scouts, I found a page showing detailed numbers for year ending 31 January 2023, so not too much difference in terms of time:
https://www.scouts.org.uk/about-us/our-impacts-and-reports/scouts-annual-report-2022-23/our-members/
Hey that's OK, nothing to be sorry for
As it happens I'd thought something like that number too, but didn't bother including it in my post!
Pulled some books off the shelves, -1960s Guiding annuals.
And in them were memories of old ladies who decided to become Scouts...Until they were told they were Guides....
And in them were memories of old ladies who decided to become Scouts...Until they were told they were Guides....
The British army knife was our favourite when you could get them for next to nothing.
I went all the way from cubs to leader. Queen's Scout was before my time, however, I knew one and once a year he got an invite to a palace garden party.
Girls were always in Scouts as they organised themselves. Scouting for Boys was written for the Boys Brigade and kids who read it in the Strand started Scout patrols including girls. It was Mrs Baden Powell who pushed for and got the guides started to be more ladylike.
Scouting for boys was based upon one of Powell’s military works (forgotten which) that had become a best seller as a”boys book”. The Scouting version was indeed influenced by The Boys Brigade but by all sorts of youth movements as well.
A small group of girls decided that they wanted to be scouts and went along to the first Jamboree without being asked. When Powell saw them he just said “No.” One of them gave a radio interview many years later.
You are right, it was his wife who heard about it and started the Guide movement which was then primarily run by his sister.
One of my leaders had been very close to earning his King’s Scout badge when George VI died. He loudly regretted that he wouldn’t be a King’s Scout and had to be a Queen’s Scout.. (Such were the times.)
For many of us it was the Gilwell woggle and a woodcraft name that mattered.
3 Alt was a bloody school troop lead by teachers. We were expected to know the life of BP!
A small group of girls decided that they wanted to be scouts and went along to the first Jamboree without being asked. When Powell saw them he just said “No.” One of them gave a radio interview many years later.
You are right, it was his wife who heard about it and started the Guide movement which was then primarily run by his sister.
One of my leaders had been very close to earning his King’s Scout badge when George VI died. He loudly regretted that he wouldn’t be a King’s Scout and had to be a Queen’s Scout.. (Such were the times.)
For many of us it was the Gilwell woggle and a woodcraft name that mattered.
3 Alt was a bloody school troop lead by teachers. We were expected to know the life of BP!
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It was only after I'd been here for a while that I actually remembered what the initial impetus was, a free gift with Bullet comic, a little document titled "Survival The Fireball Way", I could remember getting books from the library, heading up the hill & glen near our house with early versions of a tobacco tin kit and a little very dodgy fishing and trapping, but only after seeing a repro of the comic gift here did I actually remember that that's what it was, that was the spark, that's why it wasn't skateboards or Raleigh Choppers and thats why my avatar here is what it is.
Fireball - that’s going back a while alright! I have a memory of a fireball medallion too.
Ye gods that’s some powerful nostalgia.
Not sure it’s why I got into this bushcraft thing, there were no scouts anywhere near where I lived, more likely was because ended up living in the country with fields, trees, streams, rabbits, catapults. And a book called How to Survive - the cover had a cartoon of someone hanging upside down wearing snow shoes.
Didnt he mention that his teaching was good for girls too in his book? I have a copy somewhere but not to hand.